


It's a Match!

by breeeliss



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Dating, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Silly awkward children being silly and awkward, Texting, dating apps, tinder au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9041333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breeeliss/pseuds/breeeliss
Summary: "Oh my God, I just matched with Adrien Agreste, oh my freaking God! Chat!! Chat, come come come! Look look!" But Chat Noir wasn’t paying her any mind. Because the moment she started screaming about her new match, Chat Noir tried to quickly exit out of his matches page so that he wouldn’t see who popped up. But it was far too late, because right when he blinked, his phone buzzed with an excited message about his new match. He was not expecting it to be Marinette Dupain-Cheng.Tinder AU





	1. Match

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverbetheexpectation](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=neverbetheexpectation).



> This is my ML Secret Santa gift for [neverbetheexpectation!](http://neverbetheexpectation.tumblr.com/) You mentioned wanting some Lovesquare fluff so I thought I'd turn this old [Tinder AU idea](http://breeeliss.tumblr.com/post/154132512304/but-like-a-tinder-reveal-tho) that I had into a full blown story for you. I'll be updating it everyday until all the chapters are posted. Happy Holidays and I hope you enjoy this silly little tale :)

“Oh my God,  _ what _ is with all the abs?”

“Ugh, you’re getting ab pics? No fair….”

“...I’m on the men filter.”

“So? Do you know what I would do to get a picture of a pretty girl flashing her abs at me?”

“Okay, fine, but on guys it just looks douchey.”

Chat Noir frowned and gestured for Ladybug’s phone. “Let me see.”

Ladybug clutched the phone to her chest. “No! You’re gonna start swiping right on creeps again! That wasn’t funny, by the way, one of them sent me a  _ super _ inappropriate picture.”

“Don’t worry, I’m just gonna look.” He had the decency to wince. “And I apologized to you about that, I didn’t think he’d be gross. And anyway, you got back at me for that by  _ sending me the photos. _ ”

Ladybug smirked and shrugged. “You didn’t believe me. I had to prove it to you.”

He rolled his eyes and plucked the phone out of her hands. He tapped on the profile, swiped through all of the shirtless photos and snorted. “If you’re gonna swipe right over a set of abs, they need to be way better than these. That’s barely a four pack.”

Ladybug cackled and collapsed against Chat’s shoulder. “So six pack or no deal?”

“ _ At least!” _ Chat Noir scoffed. “If you’re gonna demand that women treat you vainly, you need to be on your game.” He tapped his abdomen proudly. “ _ Some _ of us are never off it.” 

“Oh, let me guess, your Tinder profile is just you flexing your  _ immaculate _ muscles, huh?”

“Of course not,” Chat Noir frowned. “My pictures are cute, whimsical, and wholesome.” He reached over and pinched her side playfully. “Although,  _ thank you _ for insisting that my muscles are immaculate. I’m gonna add that to my bio…”

“Ew!” Ladybug laughed. “Don’t do that!”

Chat Noir mimed texting on his screen. “‘He has the most immaculate abs in Paris.’ Ladybug. Oh my god, the amount of swipes I’d get.”

“I will punch you.”

“Punch my  _ rock hard abs _ . You’ll be impressed, I promise.” Ladybug shoved a thumb into his stomach instead and made him dissolve into high-pitched embarrassing laughter that left her smiling smugly at him while he tried to catch his breath. 

Chat Noir had offhandedly mentioned something about how he had just gotten a Tinder during one of their patrols a couple of weeks ago. Adrien was always reluctant to get one — him being a model sort of brought up the expectation that people would swipe right on his looks and that was it. But Nino had kindly reminded him that that was the entire point of the app. If he wasn’t going to use it to get a girlfriend, it was at least a good way to get a laugh and see what types of people he could match with. Nino cited it as a pretty decent ego boost, but Adrien just saw it as a way to kill time in between shoots and right before he went to bed for the night. 

It didn’t start to become fun for him until Ladybug told him that she had a profile too after her best friend prodded her into getting one. “I dunno,” she had said. “Something about every healthy seventeen year old teenager needing one? Don’t know if I agree with that, but it’s a pretty hilarious pastime.”

Chat Noir remembered how much fun it was to just lay out on Nino’s bed while the two of them swiped through their stacks and laughed over the kind of people who came up for them. So he asked Ladybug if she’d be willing to bring her civilian cellphone on their next patrol so that they could look at each other’s stacks and matches. He sort of expected her to say no — Chat Noir’s enthusiasm sometimes prevented him from thinking things through all the way — but she emphatically agreed to it, looking particularly curious to see what types of people he would match with. 

They didn’t show each other their personal profiles, and they had to remove their civilian phone cases and phone charms to keep from giving anything away, but it was always nice when the two of them could hang out like this and still get to do things that normal friends did. The fact that they couldn’t reveal their identities really got in the way of friend bonding, so Chat Noir was grateful for anything he could get at this point. Besides, teasing Ladybug about all the Ladybug fanboys she ran into was always worth the laugh. 

Today, they were laid out shoulder to shoulder on the roof of an apartment building after their patrol had ended. Chat Noir cupped his hands around his mouth and cheered into the sky. “Ayo! Got another match.” 

“Are you kidding me?” Ladybug scowled. “That’s like the eighth one!”

“What can I say? Ladies love me.”

“If only they knew how much of a dork you are. The poor things….”

“Um, rude?”

“You know I’m right.” She rolled her eyes when he cheered at yet another match. “Ok, seriously, every time you swipe right it’s a match. That’s so unfair.”

Chat Noir shrugged. “Granted, but look at you.” He tapped his claw to the top of her screen where she got a notification alerting her to someone superliking her profile. “You get superlikes like every five minutes.”

“I’m a girl,” Ladybug deadpanned. “Every girl gets a bunch of superlikes.”

“Not true. You get a crap ton, which is not at all surprising. The only reason you don’t match as much as I do is because you’re picky.”

“Well, duh!” Ladybug exclaimed. “All women on the planet are charming, sweet, and wonderful. Meanwhile I’m over here swiping through these men who have the personality of a literal shoebox.”

“ _ Savage _ .”

“You were the one who told me to be conscious of my standards.”

“True, true.” Chat Noir swiped three more times before he howled into sky again. 

“Are you  _ kidding me?!” _ Ladybug exclaimed. “You have double the matches I do! Are you famous or something?”

Chat Noir tapped her on the nose. “You will never know.”

She pouted at him but finally jumped a little and shoved her phone into his face in victory to show off one of her own matches. Chat Noir gave her a small round of applause before they slipped back into a comfortable silence while they kept swiping and occasionally laughing over any particularly creative bios that they found. 

A guilty part of Chat Noir was afraid of this at first because he was scared that jealousy would come cropping up where he didn’t want it to. They  _ were _ on a dating app after all, purposefully looking for other people that they found attractive. But Chat Noir had realized about a year ago that he didn’t want his infatuation with Ladybug to get in the way of their friendship. Besides, there wasn’t much of a romantic future for the two of them for as long as their identities were kept secret, or at least not a romantic future that Chat Noir could easily visualize. Things like taking Ladybug out on dates, bringing her home to meet his father, or posting cute selfies with her on his Instagram just wasn’t a reality with Ladybug, and it seemed far more worth his time to cherish her friendship first and foremost, which truly was such a wonderful thing indeed. Joking about dating profiles was purely good and honest fun, and there was no need for Chat Noir to get his hopes up or down over something like this.

Of course, that was what he  _ thought _ until Ladybug screamed and covered her mouth at the sight of the profile that just showed up in her stack. 

“What, what?” Chat Noir asked, trying to look over her shoulder. “Who is it?”

“It’s Adrien freaking Agreste, oh my God, kill me!”

Ladybug was covering her mouth and blushing underneath her mask at the sight of the picture that Adrien had put on the top of his pile. She was scrutinizing his bio and swiping through all of his pictures, pausing on each one, while Chat Noir raised a brow. Huh. Well. That was something that they never thought of. What were they supposed to do when one of them found the other’s civilian profile? There were so many people in Paris he sort of expected that wouldn’t be a problem. Although, Chat Noir found it rather amusing that Ladybug seemed to find Adrien Agreste attractive, so much so that she seemed to have panicked delightfully at the appearance of his profile. He found it rather cute, and tried to take a little bit of pride in it. 

“Oh my God, he’s less than a mile away!”

Shit. 

Chat Noir laughed nervously. “O-Oh, uh, is he? Sometimes this app messes up the mileage.”

“What is he doing all the way out here? It’s so late at ni — ”

“Um! You know what?” Chat Noir interrupted rather forcefully. “He’s that uh….that Gabriel model, right? He’s probably out doing….I don’t know….model type things?”

Ladybug hummed and tapped her finger against her lips. “That’s true. He probably has a really hectic schedule.” She sighed in frustration. “Ugh, what should I do? He probably has like a million matches….”

The intelligent thing for Chat Noir to do would be to pretend he  _ didn’t _ have such a personal stake in this. Just tell her to do whatever she felt comfortable with and leave it at that. They were supposed to be treating this like a funny, fascinating joke, just a way to hang out without pesky things like feelings get in the way. But….there was something so downright  _ satisfying _ about knowing that  _ Ladybug _ was staring at his Tinder profile and contemplating whether she should swipe on him. Ladybug contemplating whether she found him  _ attractive _ . Sure, she thought it was Adrien Agreste and didn’t realize that he was actually Chat Noir, but those were all tiny details that Chat Noir was willing to overlook. God, if she swiped right on him that would make him glow for the next fifty years. He didn’t think he’d be able to contain his enthusiasm. 

She was still agonizing over the profile, and Chat Noir tried not to sound too eager and too pushy when he asked her, “Well….what do you  _ want _ to do?”

Ladybug groaned. “....I mean, he’s gorgeous! I’d be stupid not to swipe right, he’s amazing. Ugh, but we’re probably not gonna match.”

“What makes you think that?”

Ladybug shrugged. “I mean….a couple of reasons.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know, I feel like I’m gonna freak if I do match with him and I’m gonna get all self deprecating if I don’t.”

Chat Noir snorted. “He’d be a literal idiot if he didn’t match with you.”  _ Seriously. A total, self-sabotaging idiot!  _ “But hey! You have nothing to lose! You might be pleasantly surprised. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow morning you’ll wake up with a match.” Oh, Chat Noir would swipe right on every single black-haired, blue eyed, freckled beauty if it meant having any sort of connection to Ladybug, no matter how flimsy it was. It seemed pretty harmless to him anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to know who Ladybug was amongst all of those matches of his. Identities would be safe, and Chat Noir could indulge in his own private little thrill. 

“Ugh, you’re right, you’re right. Ughhhh…..” Ladybug rubbed one of her temples. “Alright! Ok! Screw it! I’m swiping right!”

Chat Noir was again reminded about his tendency to not think things through at all. Because, amidst all of his assurances that nothing about this could possibly go wrong, he neglected to contemplate the scenario in which Chat Noir had already unknowingly swiped right on Ladybug before tonight, and that Ladybug swiping right on Adrien now would match her with him right then and there. 

Which is exactly what happened. 

Ladybug jumped and immediately started screaming as she stared at the “It’s a Match!” screen that popped up on her phone. “Holy shit!” she screamed. “We matched! We just matched! Oh my God, I just matched with Adrien Agreste, oh my freaking  _ God! _ Chat!! Chat, come come come! Look look! Oh jeez, there is no way this is happening!”

But Chat Noir wasn’t paying her any mind. Because the moment she started screaming about her new match, Chat Noir tried to quickly exit out of his matches page so that he wouldn’t see who popped up. But it was far too late, because right when he blinked, his phone buzzed with an excited message about his new match. 

He was not expecting it to be Marinette Dupain-Cheng. 

Chat Noir felt the heat leave his face and felt his eyes widen as far as they would go. His phone slipped out of his hands and clattered onto the ground.

Marinette. 

Marinette?

_ Marinette! _

Holy crap, Marinette. 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng who sat next to him in literature, behind him in maths, and in front of him in geography. 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng who was his  _ classmate _ for the past  _ two years _ . 

Marinette Dupain-Cheng who was  _ Ladybug!!!! _

This was not how this was supposed to pan out. 

“Chat? Are you okay?”

Chat Noir jumped when he felt Ladybug’s hand on his shoulder and immediately snapped his head towards her. Towards Marinette. Crap. Shit. Oh man. “Um!” he said, his voice cracking. “Yeah! F-Fine. Totally fine, yeah, good, super fine and good, haha. HA! Why um….why would you think something’s wrong?”

“I mean, I don’t know, you looked a little sick just now,” she said worriedly. 

Sick! “Yes!” he exclaimed. “S-Sick! Yes, I am….I’m sick. Uh, wow, yeah, just a headache all of a sudden. I think it’s just, ah...um...I’ve been out too late or something. Haven’t been getting sleep lately.”

Ladybug nodded. “Yeah, I guess it’s getting pretty late. I have to get up early for school tomorrow anyway.” She got up on her feet and brushed the dirt off her suit. “I’m gonna be pretty busy the next few days with assignments, so do you wanna patrol again on Thursday instead? I promise we can keep it scheduled every other day after that, I just need time to catch up.”

Chat Noir nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah! No problem! Totally cool with me! Yup!” 

Ladybug pulled out her yoyo and started eyeing the chimney on the building behind them. “Alright, cool. I guess I’ll see you in a week. Get home safe! And good luck with all of those matches.”

Chat Noir chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll uh….do my best.”

He waited until she swung out of sight before he covered his face with his hands and screamed into them as loud as he could. 

He was screwed.

* * *

 

“Okay, kid? You need to calm down.”

Adrien was pacing around his room, staring down at Marinette’s Tinder profile in abject disbelief. “This isn’t happening,” he muttered to himself. “This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, there is no way in flipping Hell this is happening.”

Plagg raised a brow from his seat on Adrien’s computer mouse. “It’s right in front of your face, I don’t know why this is still up for debate.”

Adrien whined and jumped up and down a few times. “Ooooohhhhh, can you please just let me freak out for a second? This is so much to take in at once.”

“Not really,” Plagg shrugged. “The Dupain-Cheng girl is Ladybug. Makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. Perfect girl for Tikki, to be completely honest.”

Adrien screamed and landed face down on his bed. “Stoooooooop!”

Plagg smirked and floated over to land on the pillow next to Adrien’s head. “Marinette is Ladybug! Marinette is Ladybug! Marinette is Ladybug! Marinette is — ”

“Plagg you’re not helping!”

“Yes I am,” Plagg insisted. “Look, this is surprising, sure. But, kid, I’ve seen this happen to so many Chat Noirs, you wouldn’t believe. Sure, it’s not ideal, but there’s nothing you can do about that now. The quicker you let this stick in your head, the quicker the two of you can start figuring out how to be more careful around Hawkmoth since you know each other’s identities.”

Adrien snapped into a sitting position. “Are you suggesting I  _ tell her I know?” _

Plagg stared at him in exasperation. “Are you really going to keep this a secret? Besides, you two are partners. She has every right to know that you know.”

Adrien gaped at Plagg for a moment and pursed his lips. “....can we focus on the bit where I just matched with my crush and I have no idea what to do?”

Plagg rolled his eyes and floated back over this desk. “I am  _ not _ doing this.”

“Plagg! You’re supposed to help me!”

“Not with this! This human garbage is not my expertise. That’s what Tikki is for!”

“Plagg please!!”

“Oh, good grief, just message the girl. Life isn’t as complicated as all of this.”

Adrien groaned and raked his fingers through his hair. He supposed that, yes, in the grand scheme of things this was trivial and not worth panicking over. But in the moment, this all felt so positively overwhelming. There was so much going on that he didn’t know where to start. 

Right around the time that he decided trying to pursue something romantic with Ladybug was a little unrealistic, he figured it would be worth his time to try and find someone in his civilian life that would be easier to date and with whom he could share his entire identity with. Besides, it was that whole “keep your work life and love life separate” thing, right? He supposed that’s what encouraged him to swipe right on Marinette when she showed up in his stack. 

Whatever hang ups she seemed to have about him for the first year they knew each other — the main one being that it didn’t seem like that girl was comfortable even  _ speaking _ in front of him — seemed to have dissipated with the help of Alya and Nino insisting that the four of them should spend much more time hanging out since lycee prevented them from seeing each other as often as they were used to in the past. Adrien supposed that Marinette must have been shy around him this whole time for some reason, because once they started regularly hanging out as a group, she was rather funny and easygoing. She was a blessing to sit next to in boring classes, she was always bringing them sweets and coffee from the bakery in the mornings when none of them had gotten enough sleep, and her video game tournaments slash sleepovers were legendary. 

Plus, he wasn’t going to lie. He found her really cute. 

He wondered at the time if it was weird for him to swipe right on her since they were friends and that would’ve maybe made things weird. But, Marinette wouldn’t have to know about it unless she swiped right on him as well. At the very least, if they were on the same page regarding their feelings, they could talk to each other about it and decide what they wanted to do. Heck, if you and your friend both found each other mutually attractive, surely that was something you needed to look at a little, right?

Of course, he didn’t anticipate Marinette being Ladybug. 

Figures that when he tried to move on from Ladybug, he’d be immediately drawn to her civilian identity instead. Talk about having a type….

And now that they were on the main issue….

“How did I miss this?” Adrien marvelled. “I mean, I know the whole point was that I  _ was _ supposed to miss it so that I wouldn’t know who she was but….gosh, we hang out  _ all the time! _ As superheroes and as civilians. You’d think I’d have picked up on something.”

“There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see.”

“I don’t need your proverbs, Plagg.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help like you wanted! If you’re not looking for something, you’re not gonna find it.”

Adrien frowned and kept swiping through Marinette’s photos. “Ugh, I guess.”

If he really let himself think on it, it made a lot of sense. The black hair, blue eyes, and freckles were a dead giveaway. Plus, Marinette was a frightening force to be reckoned with. Hanging out with her more this year keyed Adrien on to the way that Marinette approached everything she did with an admirable ferocity that he didn’t really get to appreciate before. Whether it was staying up all night and refusing to sleep until she understood the homework, getting more done as their class representative than Chloe ever dreamed of, or doing whatever she could to make time for the four of them amidst their busy class and homework schedules, Marinette was a determined, fiery girl that Adrien had a deep amounts of respect and admiration for. She was set in her ways, she knew what she wanted, and she did everything and anything to try and get it. It was so heavily reminiscent of his partner that he really couldn’t even stand to sit here and be surprised about it. 

Man, now it made sense why they always went to the bathroom at the same time when akuma attacks were happening across the city. He always thought that was a funny coincidence….

Well, he supposed the first thing to do was to deal with the immediate problem at hand. 

Adrien and Marinette matched. 

Ladybug clearly didn’t swipe as a joke. She was blushing up to her ears the whole time, said that he was gorgeous, and said she’d be an idiot to not swipe right on him. The thought made Adrien’s own face heat up because that meant that Marinette had to at least be crushing on him a little bit the entire time, which meant that  _ Ladybug _ had been crushing on him this entire time. Adrien couldn’t in good conscience say that he wasn’t crushing on Marinette in return because the thought of dating her was not at all unpleasant. Quite the opposite actually. 

But it changed everything to know that this was also Ladybug who he’d had a pretty sizeable crush on ever since he met her. 

Before, interacting with Marinette was like breathing. His crush on her was still new and developing, so it never got in the way of speaking to her or interacting with her. On the other hand, he still remembered what it was like to be in front of Ladybug sans his mask and powers. It was dizzying, which was surprising because he saw her everyday as Chat Noir. But there was nothing to hide behind when he saw her as himself. No jokes. No anonymity. No promise of destructive supervillains ruling the world to distract them. It was just the two of them and it made him so damn self-conscious and nervous he sometimes didn’t know what he should say. 

So of course, he was sitting on his bed, the new chat between him and Marinette open and empty, utterly clueless about what he was supposed to say. 

“It’s just Marinette,” Adrien told himself. “Marinette. Your friend. Your study partner. She kicks your butt at Mecha Strike on the reg. You’ve seen her shoot milk out her nose. This does  _ not _ need to be hard.”

“....typically, humans begin social interactions with some sort of greeting.”

Adrien frowned at Plagg who had finally come over to look over at his phone. “Gee,” he responded sarcastically. “How revolutionary.”

“This coming from the boy who’s been staring at his phone for the past twenty minutes and can’t come up with a one word greeting!”

“You don’t get it!” Adrien insisted. “This could go wrong in so many ways. What if I say something stupid? What if I freak her out? What if I accidentally let her know that I know she’s Ladybug? What if she just assumes I’m another one of those douchey guys she doesn’t like? What if we don’t actually like each other and then school  _ and _ akuma fighting becomes awkward? I’m not used to messaging people on this app, I still don’t know how this stuff is supposed to work. Like what do you open up with?”

Plagg sighed. “You’re such a strange kid. Alright, look over there.”

“What? Where, over here?”

“Yeah, right there. Just keep looking.”

“Um...okay? But I don’t see what this has to do with — hey! You rotten kwami, give me back my phone!”

Plagg laughed maniacally as he floated up to the second floor of his bedroom and immediately starting dancing across the screen. “If I leave you to your devices, we won’t get anywhere. Clearly you need a push!” 

Adrien jumped out of his bed and immediately started running up the spiral staircase to the second floor. “Don’t you dare!”

“Too late!”

“Plagg, this is my love life on the line!”

“Just trust me a little, huh?”

“That’s the absolute last thing I should be doing!”

By the time Adrien got up to the balcony and collapsed on top of Plagg and his phone, Plagg had already sent the brief message he had typed out to Marinette.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ so i guess we’re supposed to say hi to each other on this thing, right? :P _

 

Adrien snapped at Plagg. “What did you do?”

Plagg scoffed. “I helped you. You were afraid of looking creepy, so there. I fixed it.”

“How does this make me not seem creepy?” he asked in confusion. 

“Because,” Plagg explained. “You’re not just doing that ridiculous teenage boy thing where they send a ‘hey’ with nothing else as if it’s supposed to be enticing. Plus it makes you look like you’re a little nervous and like you’re not expecting anything to happen, which automatically makes you less threatening to talk to, which is the exact approach to use if this is your friendship on the line as well.”

Adrien furrowed his brows and stayed silent for a long moment. “....how do you even — ?”

“You are hardly the first teenage charge I’ve had to look over,” Plagg sighed. “Besides, your ridiculous adolescent rituals are deceptively easy to decode. It’s a wonder why you’re all so bad at figuring this stuff out.”

Adrien gripped his phone tightly and stared at the messaging screen. “Oh man, this is too stressful.”

“It’s  _ just _ talking, kid. You two do it all the time.”

“We are talking on a  _ dating app _ after we found out that we both find each other attractive. I imagine that adds a different tone to the conversation.”

“Oh big deal,” Plagg said. “Friends, lovers, enemies, it’s all the same really.”

“... _ what!?” _

“Again, you really underestimate how much Ladybug-Chat Noir drama I’ve seen over the years. This is nothing.”

“Oh my God, how can you simultaneously be helping and not helping?”

“Because you’re ungrateful!”

“You stole my phone!”

Plagg kicked Adrien in the cheek and pushed his head towards his phone. “Look, you silly. She answered you.”

Adrien choked on his spit and coughed through his watery eyes as he tried to read the message that Marinette had sent back.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ haha, yeah, that’s what i heard! :) _

 

Huh. Okay. Well. That was a normal enough response. Plus she sent a smiley face back, so he supposed this wasn’t too strange. They could go on like normal, right? 

He decided to ask.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ i hope this isn’t too weird. i don’t want to make you uncomfortable. _

 

It was agonizing to have to wait for a response, but when she finally did text back, he let out a huge sigh of relief.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ oh no not at all! i know you’re not weird :P though, tbh, i didn’t expect you to message me _

 

Adrien panicked. “Uhhhh, what do I say?”

“Kid, I’m not your matchmaker,” Plagg yawned. “Just do your best. You’re a sweet kid. I doubt you’re gonna accidentally say something to make her uncomfortable.” 

He floated off and left Adrien leaning against his bookcase and trying to figure out what he was meant to open up with. It was probably in poor taste to bring up the fact that he found her attractive since, well, they sort of knew that already. But it was also sort of weird to try and say let’s get to know each other more when they were already friends and knew plenty about each other to begin with. What were you supposed to do when you matched with your friends on a dating app? What was the first thing you talked about?

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ oh well that’s good…. _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ ….so how about that history homework? _

 

_ God _ , he was so stupid. How was the history homework? Was that the best he could come up with? In all of the amazing one liners in the world that could effectively break the ice, he picked a homework question? Why was he even bothering with this?

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ sorry sorry. that was super weird. never mind.  _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ HAHA! nice opener :P good i guess. it’s just really long. you?  _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ haven’t started it. i’m scared to even look at it.  _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ i hear you. good thing it’s not due til friday. but i kinda want to get it out the way _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ lol makes sense _

**_Adrien:_ ** _...do you….wanna vc and work on it together? might be better with two heads working together _

 

He almost regretted it the moment that he sent it and hoped that it wasn’t too weird. It wasn’t the first time they video chatted, but it was usually done with Nino and Alya there with them. But he figured that it would be a cool way for the two of them to just hang out by themselves and have something easy and neutral like homework to ease the conversation. This app had a really bad habit of making something as simple as talking seem so weird, and Adrien was really hoping he wasn’t jumping the gun here and assuming Marinette’s comfort level with this sort of thing. Then again, it was just homework. Nothing to read into there. Just….homework. They could do that, right?

Thankfully, despite the rather lengthy pause, Marinette responded positively.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ sure! sounds like a plan. just give me ten minutes _

 

Adrien sighed in relief and started jogging back down the stairs to boot his computer up. Alright. This was simple enough. Completely painless. He could totally do this. 


	2. Hangout

**_Marinette:_ ** _ ok explain to me right now with sources and testimonials from experts why this would be at all a good idea _

 

Adrien snorted and tried to make the texting he was doing in his lap look nondescript while he made occasional glances up at the lecture that was going on in front of him.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ you have no faith! the novelty of placing a protagonist into something like mecha strike is super intriguing. like come on. think of the storyline you could create _

 

He sort of remembered Marinette complaining to him a couple of nights ago that she was falling behind in all of her literature reading and needed to start paying more attention in class to help her catch up. But he snuck a peek at her notebook from his seat next to her and saw that she was doodling random dresses and suits in the corners of her pages and writing out the words “ban the Mecha Strike movie!” over and over again across the page. When she finally received his message, she huffed, turned her notebook towards him, and started frantically typing a response, all the while making Adrien laugh quietly behind his tablet. Thank goodness they sat in the back of the classroom.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ ok but pick a one player story driven game to do that with. mecha strike is a fighting game and that’s it. why try to add plot to something that doesn’t need it? _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ look at street fighter! they made that into a movie _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ that movie totally bombed! _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ that’s because they did nothing with the characters. have you read the summary of the mecha strike movie? they created a whole backstory for the mech! _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ ugh that’s making me nervous _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ it’s going to be totally cool _

 

Marinette reached over, circled all of the repeated lines she was writing in her notebook, and flicked him on the nose with the end of her pen. Adrien stuck his tongue and took his own pen to quickly cross out all of the words on Marinette’s notebook. She was doing her best not to laugh out loud and cause a ruckus, so she tried to kick Adrien under the table and prevent him from touching her things, but he was already halfway through striking out everything before she finally thought to reach over and pinch him in the thigh. It was a bad move because he immediately yelped and banged his knee on the underside of the desk, leaving Marinette to quickly pillow her head in her arms to try and smother her laughter. 

“M. Agreste, Mlle. Dupain-Cheng. Is there something amusing about this lesson that I’m missing?”

Marinette tried to keep a straight face and shook her head. “Sorry, madame. Adrien just banged his leg, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Adrien whispered to her. “The movie’s going to be a  _ bang _ too.”

She waited until the teacher was turned back to the board before she sent a weak glare in his direction. Adrien merely winked and sent a mock salute her way before she reached back down to her phone.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ you personally offend me _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ why because i have faith in humanity? _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ also wow you have such neat handwriting _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ no because you have faith in nonsense. and thanks <3 _

 

Adrien raised a brow at the heart, and quickly tried to calculate what it meant.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ of course. pretty writing for a pretty lady. and nonsense to some is genius to others! _

 

He winced the moment he sent the message because he was afraid it was too much at once. It was why he tagged an innocuous message at the end of it in the hopes that it distracted Marinette from what he said. Marinette looked like she had taken a long pause as she read through the message, and Adrien suddenly felt his heart speed up, worried that he had made her uncomfortable. But he let out the breath he was holding in when Marinette merely sent him back a long line of eye rolling emojis, and suddenly the conversation was right back to normal. 

Admittedly, Adrien wasn’t too familiar with texting girls. He knew there was a lot of unspoken rules about texting that he’d heard from his classmates. Smiley faces were friendly, winky faces were not. If a girl took two hours to text you back, you had to wait at least that long before you responded again. Frankly, he found it all a little silly. Adrien didn’t know why it was weird to send winky faces whenever he sent Marinette puns and didn’t understand why he was supposed to  _ wait _ to text her back just because she didn’t answer him right away because she was busy. But, he was at least starting to realize why texting was complicated. 

Mainly because he didn’t know where in the world the two of them even stood right now. 

It seemed like they were trying their hardest to ignore the obvious which was that they clearly liked each other, and Adrien wasn’t quite sure what to do about that. Adrien almost wanted to think that something had shifted between them, because Adrien had never texted Marinette directly like this before until they started chatting on Tinder. In just the past week, the amount of useless conversations they’ve had over text and video chat were so plentiful it was rather jarring. Surely that meant something, right? That things were progressing, that things were changing? 

Except that they kept all the talking friendly and platonic. Adrien didn’t necessarily mind that — who else was he going to rant about movie adaptations of video games with? — but it seemed like flirting was natural in this case. Hell, this  _ was _ Tinder. That was the point. However, Adrien figured he was reading too much into things and was better off just following Marinette’s lead so as not to make her uncomfortable. 

But then she did things like end her messages with little hearts and sent Adrien for a loop. 

What did sending a heart in response to “you have nice handwriting” mean? Was that friendly? Flirty? A typo? Was he supposed to send one back?

Sometimes when Marinette did things like that — send random hearts and winky faces and rosy cheeked smiles in places that made Adrien blink and blush — he tended to ignore it, but other times, like just now, he countered it with a quick compliment just to see what would happen. She’d either thank him, send him another emoji back, or tell him to stop being silly. This was the first time he’d seen her while she reacted to his messages, actually pausing like he’d surprised her before texting back. 

What did  _ that _ mean? Was she pausing because he was being weird?

Was she embarrassed?

Did she want him to send more messages like that?

Nino promised him that “going with the flow” would suit him well, but Adrien wasn’t sure how helpful that was going to be here. 

It was the first time where interacting with his Lady was genuinely confusing. 

They kept volleying back comments about the Mecha Strike movie throughout the rest of class before everyone started collecting their books and getting ready to leave for the day. 

“Fun weekend plans?” Adrien asked. 

Marinette snorted. “Well, I was going to sleep, binge eat, and avoid my homework….”

Adrien smirked. “Which is what you do every weekend.”

“But I should try to get a headstart on my portfolio. I wanna start applying to internships over break but I’m so not ready yet.”

He vaguely remembered her mentioning it to Alya over lunch yesterday. Something about needing to up her game where her designs were concerned so she could look impressive next to the older applicants who were likely trying to snag intern positions for themselves. “You’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

Marinette covered her face with her hands and spoke through her fingers. “Thanks. I just need to sit down one night and blast through it.”

He was about to leave it at that, but then Adrien suddenly remembered that Nathalie texted him this morning to tell him that the photographer for the shoot he was supposed to be doing all this weekend had come down with the flu and had decided to push the date back. Whenever random mishaps like that happened, she tended not tell his father about it, which meant that his entire weekend was pretty much free. He gripped the straps of his bag and quickly tried to figure out if he was about to cross some weird boundary, but he decided to go for it anyway. “Do you, um….do you want some company?”

Marinette stopped in the middle of the hallway. “What?”

“O-Oh, I don’t know,” he stumbled. “I just meant, like….I mean, it sounded like you were stressing so maybe some company might help?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever been over to Marinette’s house, but it was always with either Alya, Nino, or both of them joining him. He hoped it seemed innocent and friendly enough, even though Adrien would be lying if he said his intentions were solely friendly. It just seemed like there was something simmering under the surface with the two of them, and he wanted to gently prod it a bit to see if this was all in his imagination or if Marinette would be receptive to spending some time alone with him. 

She blinked prettily at him for a moment before she struggled for a response. “U-Uh. I-I mean, I don’t think it’d be….I mean it’s not very exciting.” She was tugging on one of her braids nervously. “I-It’s super boring to watch me work, I doubt you’d want to.”

Adrien shrugged. “I don’t mind. I can just do homework or something. I-I mean, unless I’d be bothering you, which….I mean it was just a thought I don’t have to — ”

“No no!” she replied quickly. “It’s totally okay! I just….I didn’t….I mean, yes. Yes, you can. Yes.”

“Oh! Okay, cool! That’s….great!”

Marinette was nibbling on her lip and rocking back and forth on her feet while Adrien slapped his hands against his thighs to give them something to do. It was way easier to deal with awkward silences over text, and Adrien suddenly had the compulsion to cut in with something random just to get them talking and change the subject. But Marinette rubbed the back of her neck and asked, “A-Actually, maybe you can help me with something?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“Remember when I creepily asked you and Nino for your measurements like a month ago?”

Adrien nodded. “Yeah, for designs right?”

Marinette nodded. “Well, I haven’t actually had anyone try them on. And it’s the first time I’m making clothes for men. I have one almost ready that I used your measurements for. W-Would you….I mean would you mind trying it on for me? So I can make adjustments? I mean if you don’t want to that’s totally fine. I know modelling can get kind of dull.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Adrien chuckled. “I mean, it’d be an absolute honor to model some of your clothes.”

His intention wasn’t to embarrass her or flatter her for the sake of getting a reaction, but he got one anyway. Her cheeks looked a little pinker than usual, and she was sucking on her bottom lip while she laughed nervously and fiddled with the ends of her hair again. The whole thing just looked so adorable that he knew his embarrassment was written all over his face. He covered his cheeks with his hand and coughed so it looked like he was clearing his throat. “So yeah! Um, totally want to help!”

“O-Okay!” Marinette piped in. “Um. I’m gonna go walk Alya home, but do you want to meet me at the bakery in half an hour?”

“Definitely. I’ll….yeah, I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay great.”

“Cool.”

“Awesome.”

They stayed standing in front of each other for a couple more seconds, nodded, and then promptly pivoted away from each other to go find their respective friends. 

Okay. Well. That wasn’t too terrible. Could’ve gone better! But not too terrible. Solid 6/10. 

Adrien smacked himself in the cheek. How were you supposed to talk to cute girls that you liked without looking like an idiot? He never had trouble talking to Marinette before. Now that he knew she was Ladybug and he wanted to hang out with her alone, it’s like his brain wanted to get all stupid and prevent him from putting words together. He was so afraid of seeming weird that he didn’t know what to say in front of her. At least Ladybug knew not to take Chat Noir seriously. But now? There were no masks or screens to hide behind, no awkward silences that could be excused away as video lags. Just Adrien trying to be cool and not act like a lump of awkwardness, which was going  _ freaking swimmingly _ right about now. 

They just needed to spend more time together, just the two of them. Get used to each other. That was all. Easy enough. They’d go to Marinette’s house, hang out, be normal, and all this tension would go away. 

Probably. Ideally. Hopefully. Maybe not. Ugh. Optimism, optimism, optimism….

Nino was cackling at the news while the two of them walked to his apartment building, and he didn’t really have any advice for Adrien sans slapping him on the shoulder and telling him to stop thinking about this so hard. “Seriously. Life is not this complicated dude. Take a risk and do something ballsy. Might get her attention.”

“You say that like it’s easy,” Adrien muttered. “But if I take a risk, I’ll come off too strong and she might not like me  _ that _ much — ”

“Oh my God, dude.”

“....what?”

He plopped his hands on Adrien’s shoulders. “Take the risk.”

“But — ”

“Just trust me,” he assured. “You’ll be pleasantly surprised.” 

Adrien doubled back to Tom & Sabine’s, walking around the block a couple of times and jogging out his anxiety before he went inside and greeted Marinette’s father who was currently refilling the glass display cases with fresh pastries. He discreetly stuffed a couple of them into a paper bag for Adrien and told him to go right on upstairs. Marinette was already blasting music which apparently meant that she was hard at work and would remain that way until her parents forced her to come downstairs and eat. 

When he climbed up the ladder to her room, it looked like all of Marinette’s drawers and closets had exploded. She had her designs taped all over the walls of her room, her four dress forms were dragged to the center of the room with half finished designs already pinned on, and all of the rolls and piles of fabric that she needed were draped across the fainting couch, over her loft bed, and across the keyboard on her desk. He tried to maneuver around the mess, being careful not to step on the pin cushions and sewing boxes that were strewn about the floors. He made his way over to Marinette, who was kneeling in front of a pair of slacks that she had placed on one of the dress forms. She had five pins in her mouth and two tape measures and a pair of suspenders wrapped around her neck while she adjusted the hem of the pants. 

Adrien snorted at the sight. “You need to clean up in here….”

“Don’t touch anything!”

He pulled out her desk chair and gestured to the piles of cloth draped across it. “Seriously?”

Marinette widened her eyes comically. “The mess helps me concentrate.”

“Okay, I’m gonna put this on your desk, okay? Geez, you made this mess in half an hour?”

“I told you, I have a lot to catch up on.” 

Adrien rolled his eyes and reached over to pluck the pins out of Marinette’s mouth. She seemed stunned by it at first and seemed to freeze when he had come near, but she quickly relaxed and dropped her shoulders when he tapped a pastry to her lips. “Your father says you forget to eat.” She reluctantly took the treat, took a huge bite, and sat down in front of her design to stare at it in a way that Adrien found funnily reminiscent of the way his father would scrutinize his own sketches in his large office. He decided to leave her be and took out some of his physics homework to kill some time. 

The two of them worked in relative silence for the next hour — Adrien blasting through a good chunk of his homework and Marinette moving in between four of her ongoing designs and occasionally bringing something over to her desk to run it through the sewing machine. Despite the mess, being in Marinette’s room was very relaxing. She had good taste in music, her room was small and homey, and it looked lived in. Adrien’s room was too spacious and so hard to fill with noise and life that it often distracted him from doing his work. He supposed it was also nice to just be able to sit next to someone else while he did work. He had to remember to ask Marinette if she ever wanted to come over to his house to maybe study together again. 

He looked away from his problem set when Marinette finally draped a few pieces of clothing over his notebooks. “Could I borrow you for like twenty minutes?”

“That’s why I’m here.” They were the dark grey slacks she had been working on when he first came inside, a short-sleeved black button up with a subtle dark green embroidery, and a pair of dark green suspenders. He rubbed his thumb against the material of the shirt. “Nice fabric choice.”

“Thanks,” Marinette beamed. “Just the shirt and the pants are fine, although if you’re comfortable putting the suspenders on that would be a huge help.”

“No problem,” he assured. “I’ve finagled my way into worse.” 

“Try not to rip anything please!”

“Yes ma’am!”

Adrien got dressed in her bathroom and had to marvel at how well she got his measurements down. The shirt fit almost perfectly, just a tad tight on the shoulders. Although, he was sure that had more to do with the fact that she asked for the measurements months ago and he was pretty sure he’d been broadening out due to how much of an upper body work out fighting with his staff as Chat Noir gave him. The pants were just a little too long, but that was nothing a little hemming couldn’t fix. It wasn’t often that he ever got to wear suspenders in photo shoots, but he rather liked how they looked on him. It brought attention to his chest and the cut of the shirt, and he was half tempted to ask Marinette if he could keep the outfit. He really forgot how talented she was. 

“Alright, everything fits almost perfect,” Adrien said as he walked out the bathroom, still looking down at adjusting the clip of the suspenders near his waist. “Is there anywhere you want me to stand? Marinette?”

She didn’t reply right away, and it wasn’t until Adrien looked up that he understood why. Marinette was staring at him, but not in the way she had done in the hallway at school when he told her how happy he’d be to help her by modelling her clothes. No, nothing about this was filled with nerves. Her eyes were roving and she was biting the inside of her cheek, looking quite like he had stunned her into silence. He wanted to say it was because she was scrutinizing the outfit on a purely technical level, but she licked her lips and let out a soft breath that made Adrien think it was just a little different than that. It made him feel self conscious, and suddenly he was shifting the weight in between his feet, unsure of what he was supposed to be doing with his body, what he even looked like to her standing across the room. 

Marinette cleared her throat and almost visibly shook her head out of whatever daze she had put herself into. “Um….it looks really nice. Does it….does it feel okay?”

Adrien rubbed his chest and didn’t miss the way her eyes followed the action. “The shoulders are pinching a little. And the pants are too long.”

Marinette nodded and finally turned away from him. “You can stand on the fainting couch then. I can hem up the pants for you.”

He did as he was told, and watched her as she collected a few pins in her mouth and moved in front of him. For some reason, the image of Marinette looking up at him, gulping, and kneeling down in front of him to fiddle with the hem of his pants made him feel as if all the air in his chest had been punched out of him. He gulped and tried to keep his gaze on the windows, but now he was so hyper aware of all the little glances she was stealing up at him in between hemming his slacks. It made his skin buzz with a kind of energy, excitement, or nervousness that he only ever remembered feeling in front of Ladybug a handful of times. Of course, it was different because those moments never included reciprocation on Ladybug’s end. When she happened to catch Adrien gulping, she followed the bob of his Adam’s apple before looking back at her work, and there was no way something like that was innocuous. It emboldened him to keep his eyes fixed on the way her lips parted and pursed together again when she plucked a new pin from between them. 

Thankfully, it didn’t take her long to adjust the length and stand back up to look at him from afar. “Better?”

“Much,” he answered, stepping down onto the floor. “Does everything else look good?”

“Y-Yeah,” she breathed out. “I….didn’t expect you to look this handsome in it.”

Adrien felt himself shiver. Handsome _.  _ As many times as he’d heard photographers tell him the same thing, this was the first time that the comment warmed his body this pleasantly. He decided to take some of Nino’s previous advice and dip his head a little so that his bangs fell out from behind his ear and into his eyes. “Should I take that as a compliment?”

Marinette nibbled on her thumb nail. “Well, the clothes only do so much….”

“Well,” Adrien smirked. “That certainly means a lot coming from you.”

“Why from me?”

Adrien shrugged and adjusted one of the suspenders. “I guess I care what you think.”

Marinette rubbed the pad of her thumb across her bottom lip. “You care that I find you handsome?”

“Of course,” Adrien said. “Because that means that we’re both on the same page.”

He had a feeling she knew exactly where he was going with this, but she seemed to be egging him on, getting him to say what he was trying to keep subtle and unspoken. “And what page is that?”

_ Take a risk. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.  _ “That I find you just as pretty.”

Adrien heard her gasp and suck on the tip of her thumb to mute the noise, but it didn’t matter because his eyes drank in the action, staring intently at her mouth and the blush on the bridge of her nose that made her seem so charming and wonderful to him. His hands were clenching and unclenching and it was so frustrating to know that they both felt the same about each other and not be able to figure out what to do from there. The meter separating the two of them felt so large and empty at that moment, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to close the distance or simmer in the tension. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to reach out and touch her or let the want speak for itself. 

What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to say? Why wasn’t Marinette saying or doing anything back? How was it possible that his brain could be working so sluggishly but frantically taking in so much information about the girl in front of him at the same time?

“Are you kids hungry up there?”

The booming voice of Marinette’s father completely broke the spell, and it felt like Adrien was physically pulled out of himself and back into reality. Marinette didn’t take her eyes off of Adrien when she yelled back an answer. “We’ll come down in a second, Papa.”

She folded her hands in front of her and tipped her chin towards him. “Want me to wait for you to get undressed so we can go down together?”

Adrien shook his head. “No, you go ahead. I’ll meet you down there.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Adrien watched her leave her pins and tape measures on her desk while she climbed through the hatch and down the stairs to the living room. It wasn’t until she heard her enter the kitchen to where her father was that Adrien yanked at his hair and fell back to sit on the chaise. 

He was going to die. She was going to kill him. 

Feeling like he needed to get a little bit of control over himself, he rushed back to his discarded clothes, pulled out his cellphone, and opened Tinder.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ if i ever made you uncomfortable you would tell me right? _

 

Adrien changed out of Marinette’s clothes and gently placed them back on the dress form while he waited for a response. He was in the middle of pulling his jeans back on when his phone buzzed.

 

**_Marinette:_ ** _ i’m right downstairs you know. you can just come down and ask me.  _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ i know but….humor me _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ of course i would. but i’ve never had a reason to tell you.  _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ alright. because i have something i want to ask you.  _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ adrien seriously i’m in the kitchen _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ i know just….one minute….i promise _

 

He finished getting dressed and tried to do it as quickly as possible so that he wouldn’t have time to second guess himself and change his mind about what he was going to do. He pulled on his shoes and quickly jogged down the steps and over to the kitchen where Marinette was sitting and eating the lunch that her father made for her, her phone still in her hands. She pushed another plate of food towards the other end of the table when she spotted Adrien in the kitchen. “There you are. Here, eat something. And what do you need to tell me?”

Adrien nodded to himself, sucked in a huge breath, and spoke as clearly as his nerves would let him. 

“Do you want to go on a date with me tomorrow?”


	3. Impulsive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was starting to turn into a 10k chapter so I decided to chop it. which means you'll actually get a speedy update afterwards this time :P

Marinette’s phone slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor. 

Adrien really wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad sign, but Marinette was definitely not saying anything, and she was staring at him like he had just sacrificed an infant in front of her. 

He was afraid he might’ve broken her. 

A laugh came bubbling from the kitchen and Adrien’s eyes widened in horror when he realized that Marinette’s father was still in the kitchen and had likely heard his entire outburst. He immediately clamped a hand over his mouth and watched Tom quickly push all the dishes into the sink and tighten the sash on the back of his baking apron. He didn’t look  _ angry _ so Adrien supposed that was a good sign, but he realized that asking out someone’s daughter in front of them was probably in poor taste and grounds to potentially get him  _ killed _ . Adrien stood up straight, clasped his hands behind his back, and muttered. “Uh….h-hello. Sir. Um. I wasn’t — I mean I was just.” He cleared his throat. “H-Hi.”

Tom chuckled to himself, walked around the island and patted Adrien on the head. “I think I’ll leave the two of you alone and help Sabine downstairs. Enjoy your lunches.” He confused Adrien further by sending him a little wink before he scurried down to the bakery and left him alone with Marinette. 

Who still….wasn’t moving. 

Okay, so he anticipated this would go a heck of a lot differently. Oh well. 

Marinette’s mouth was moving, but words weren’t coming out, and Adrien was really hoping that this was a normal reaction to asking a girl out, otherwise he was ready to just bolt out of the bakery and jump into the Seine to spare himself the shame. 

Adrien’s smile came out more pained than he meant for it to. “Um….so this is usually the part where you say yes or no.”

Marinette still wasn’t saying anything. Instead she put down her sandwich, got up from her chair, and calmly walked to the living room. She took one of the couch cushions, pressed it to her face, and leaned over the back of the couch until her feet were kicking frantically in air while she screamed bloody murder into the pillow. 

…..what on Earth was  _ happening _ ?

Adrien tentatively walked to the living room. “Er. So….do you need help or — ?”

Marinette lifted up a finger. “Just. Give me. Like. A minute.”

Adrien stood up straight and nodded. “O-Oh. Yeah, ok, cool. No, I respect that. Um. Do you. Need anything? Like water, or?”

“N-No! No, I just. Just like. Just a minute, I promise. I….” She groaned into the pillow and turned it into another desperate scream that had Adrien almost jumping out of his skin. He looked around nervously and decided to just sit back down at the kitchen counter and eat his lunch while Marinette took her minute to….scream into pillows, he guessed. 

He sighed and watched her roll around the couch. Girls were so confusing. 

Adrien flipped through his Instagram for a bit and got halfway through his lunch when Marinette finally grabbed her pillow, hugged it to her chest, and sat back down at the counter across from him. She pulled her legs up so that her feet were resting on the edge of the chair and pointed to the cookies her father left on the table for them. “Can you pass me one?”

“Done screaming?” he grinned, pushing the plate towards her. 

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I just didn’t see that coming.”

“Yeah,” Adrien winced. “I, uh….haha, well. I guess I could’ve done that a little bit better. I’m not really good at this sort of thing.”

“N-No, you didn’t do anything wrong!” Marinette insisted. “It’s honestly me! You really honestly just took me by surprise.”

Adrien raised a brow and smirked. “‘It’s not you, it’s me’ huh?”

“Stop, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Adrien laughed and spoke through a mouthful. “Well, I guess this isn’t the worst way to be turned down. I’m just glad that — ”

“Wait!” Marinette broke in. “You think I rejected you?”

Adrien blinked and looked side to side. “Uh. I mean.  _ Didn’t _ you?”

“No! Oh my  _ God _ no!” Marinette said loudly. “I would love to go on a date with you, are you insane?”

Adrien leaned back in his seat. “Oh. I mean….sorry?”

Marinette covered her mouth with her hands. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. But, yeah, no. Of course. Yes, to the date. I’d love that. Yes. Definitely. Yes, yes.”

Adrien smiled at her rambling. “Most assuredly?”

She giggled. “Absolutely.”

“Just checking to be clear. Is that an affirmative?”

“It is a very clear assent, yes.”

“Indeed.”

“Certainly.”

“Agreed.”

“Roger.”

They managed to keep eye contact for only a few more seconds before they burst out laughing, both of them almost choking on their food with the effort. It was with tears in his eyes and while banging on his chest to try and clear his throat that Adrien marvelled at how quickly the two of them could go from being so tentative around each other to dissolving into this strange sort of comfort that they were able to build up in the past year. With how easy it was to let loose around Ladybug during patrols, Adrien was surprised that he hadn’t figured all of this out by himself sooner. Everything suddenly felt so surreal to him. Sitting in Marinette’s kitchen, choking on food, crying through laughter, knowing that they had a date tomorrow, and knowing that he was going to see her again tomorrow night during patrol, albeit without her realizing it. It was strange in the sense that this was all very new, but exciting in the sense that he felt happier than he could ever remember being before. 

It took a while for their laughter to calm down, but when it did Adrien took a moment to watch Marinette break up the cookies in between her fingers, all the while unable to keep the dopey looking grin off her face, as if her entire day had just been completely turned around. He leaned his chin in his hand. “You’re smiling.”

Marinette looked up at him. “Of course I am,” she said earnestly. “I’m just. Happy I guess. Really, really happy.”

He swore his chest was going to burst with how full his heart felt then. “Well, I’m glad I could make you happy,” he smiled back, his cheeks pleasantly sore with the effort. “I’m just so relieved you said yes. I didn’t really think about what I’d do if you didn’t. Probably crawl under a rock and die.”

“Why on Earth would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Adrien groaned. “I’m not really an expert at this sort of thing. All this time I was trying to be careful about not freaking you out because that’s way more important to me than whether you turn me down or not. The whole ‘matching on a dating app’ thing can be creepy all on its own, and I didn’t want to accidentally make it worse.” 

“Is that why you ask whether you’re making me uncomfortable all the time?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I hope that wasn’t annoying.”

“No, if anything it was refreshing. You know, that you’d care about my feelings so much.”

“Of course I do,” Adrien said, as if the answer were so painfully obvious. “I care so much about what happens to you, and I care about what you think of me. I don’t ever want to be the reason you feel unsafe or can’t trust me.” He almost tagged “my Lady” at the end of it, because it really felt like he was speaking to her as her partner and not just her friend. But he held his tongue because he wasn’t quite ready to have that conversation yet, wasn’t quite sure how to even breach the topic. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing you could just come out and say, but the longer he held onto the secret, the more restless he became. 

He was afraid that all of the sudden sincerity had come on too strong, but Marinette ducked her head and hid her face behind her bangs. “I care about you too.”

Adrien hoped that his grin didn’t look too goofy. “Well, I’m glad.”

Marinette stared at him fondly for a few seconds before she sighed out, her shoulders lifting and dropping with the effort. “So! Date, huh? Where to?”

“Ah, that is a secret,” Adrien promised. 

“Oh really? I don’t even get a hint?”

“Nope. I’m a no spoilers kind of guy.” Yeah, no spoilers, because he literally came up with the idea five minutes ago and had absolutely no idea what kind of date Marinette would enjoy. You’d think he would’ve thought of that before he went and blurted the first idea that came into his head. 

“So I guess you have this handled. Should I just show up?”

“I mean, are you free tomorrow at noon? I could swing by your place and pick you up.”

“That’s perfect. I’ll finish up at the registers by then. What should I wear?”

Adrien shrugged, immediately canceling out in his head anything that required a strict dress code. “Oh, just anything is fine.”

“Wow, you really are being vague about this.”

“Yup! That’s me. Super vague. Super secretive.” He cleared his throat and tried to change the topic. “By the way, if you’re really serious about getting designing internships, I could show some of your designs to my father. I’m sure he’d be really impressed with the one I was wearing today.”

Marinette’s jaw dropped. “Shut up! You’re screwing with me.”

“No, seriously. It wouldn’t be any trouble. Gabriel’s looking for interns right now anyway. Nathalie screens all the apps before she gives the good ones to my father. I can put in a good word for you.”

“Wait, wait,  _ wait!” _ Marinette practically shouted. “When do applications end? What does he value in an applicant? What fabrics does he hate? What does he think is overused? How much of a chance do you actually think I have at this? Oh my God….”

“Woah, woah, chill,” Adrien snickered. “I can show you some stuff similar to what’s on one of this season’s mood boards. He was looking at it the other day and seemed really pleased. I mean, only if you think it’ll help.”

Marinette reached across the table and grabbed both of his hands. “That would literally be the most amazing thing on the entire planet.”

“Alright, alright. Finish your lunch first! Your father is right, you never finish your meals.”

“Okay, okay, I’m chewing, I’m chewing.”

* * *

 

Adrien had to tell her that he knew. 

He’d fully decided upon it when he left Marinette’s house later that afternoon and started frantically typing date ideas into the notepad app on his phone during the walk back to his house. Plagg was right. It felt  _ wrong _ not to tell her that he knew who she was, almost like he was holding some huge piece of blackmail material over her head that she wasn’t even aware of. That didn’t hit him until he sat there and told Marinette how hard he tried to make sure that he never did anything that would even suggest a breach of trust. Their partnership necessitated that they never keep anything from each other, even if it was uncomfortable. 

That’s why even just telling Ladybug that he knew her civilian identity felt unsatisfying. The whole point of keeping identities a secret was for safety, and even his accidental discovery was just one small scrap of weakness that could be used against Ladybug. Heaven forbid he should ever be possessed by an akuma — or even akumatized — and told to retrieve the miraculouses. He would know not to just go after Ladybug, he would know to go after Marinette instead. He was obviously entertaining worst case scenarios, but it was important that if she had a handicap in this relationship, then Adrien should as well. 

It was only fair that she “accidentally” find out that Adrien was actually Chat Noir. 

Plus, considerations about practicalities aside….Adrien really liked her. It was still a challenge getting used to the fact that Ladybug and Marinette shouldn’t be thought of as separate people — that they were both the exact same girl and that whatever he felt for one he automatically felt for the other. It made his decision to move on from Ladybug and his decision to get to know Marinette better as a result all the more confusing as well. But despite all that, he found that focusing on small moments added clarity to it all — small moments like the day he spent in her house yesterday, all of her texts that he still had saved, the silly hearts, swirls, and doodles she’d draw on his notebooks in class that he never had the heart to erase. Such simple things brought a smile to his face and a warmth to his body. So it mattered to him that he keep no secrets from her, and it mattered especially that he hold no secrets over her either. No matter how he spun it, the conclusion was the same. She needed to know. 

Of course, Adrien already ascertained that just coming right out and saying it wasn’t the best way to go about it. Directness wasn’t exactly his forte. 

But….they did have a date tomorrow. 

Maybe a little game of “follow the breadcrumbs” would work?

By the time he’d made the proper calls and proper reservations, Alya was already calling him into a three-way call with Nino and screaming into his ear, telling him that she’d heard about the date from Marinette and demanding he tell her where he was going to take her. It passed the Best Friend test which was nice — “Holy shit, Adrien, she’s going to love the crap out of this, you have to take pictures and send me everything, this is a huge life event we’re talking about here” — and Plagg, while finding it incredibly cheesy and entirely too sentimental, at least agreed that a girl like Marinette would probably like that sort of thing. 

He was ridiculously nervous, and he wound up waking up at close to seven in the morning and pacing around his room working out last minute details because his anxiety was making his chest ache. But, dramas surrounding identities aside, he at least hoped that she would have fun. Adrien had never been pulling his hair out more to make sure that someone close to him enjoyed their time with him.

 

**_Adrien:_ ** _ hey im gonna swing by soon. is that ok? _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ yeah im almost ready! just um...brace yourself ok? _

**_Adrien:_ ** _...why? _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ parents _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ oooohhhhh _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ your parents seem so nice though! _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ they are! and they’re thrilled you’re taking me out. that’s the problem _

**_Adrien:_ ** _ not really getting you here but i’ll take your word for it _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ just...ignore everything papa says and accept everything maman gives you _

**_Marinette:_ ** _ i’ll see you soon :) _

 

Adrien needed to make a note to learn to take Marinette’s warnings more seriously, because when he entered the bakery at noon sharp, he didn’t even get to get a single syllable out before Marinette’s father popped out from the kitchen, his arms wide and his face split into a brilliant smile. 

“There’s the man of the hour!”

Tom pulled Adrien into a fierce hug and managed to pick him up off the floor during his efforts. Adrien couldn’t do anything other than blink while Tom turned him around and plopped him back on the ground, his hands gripping his shoulders firmly. “Ah, you look handsome Adrien! Going somewhere fancy, are you?”

Adrien laughed nervously. “Ahaha, nothing too crazy, M. Dupain. We’re just hanging out, I promise.”

“Aw, come now, don’t be shy.” He leaned in close and cupped a hand around his ear. “Just between two men, you can tell me what you have planned, right?”

“Stop interrogating that poor boy, Tom,” Sabine scolded from behind the counter, finishing off with a customer. “It’s supposed to be a surprise. Marinette doesn’t know anything.”

Tom actually pouted in disappointment and spoke over his shoulder. “Oh, surely he can give me a hint?”

“No!” she said with a smile. “This is between the two of them. This darling here will show her a good time I have no doubt.” Sabine rounded the corner and handed Adrien a croissant and a cheese danish wrapped up in paper. “I saw your most recent ad, Adrien. It’s on the billboards near the metro station. You look wonderfully dashing, but so thin! What sort of diet do they have you on?”

Adrien balanced on his toes and kept his hands clasped behind his back. “Well, all the models at Gabriel have to keep a certain calorie count. Portion out meals, things like that.”

Sabine rolled her eyes. “Utter nonsense, you look like you’re disappearing.” She pushed the pastries into his hands. “Here, have some food, get some energy inside of you. You can afford to cheat just a little, can’t you?”

“Well. I guess one cheat day won’t hurt. Thank you Mme. Cheng.”

Tom peeked behind Adrien’s back with a delighted gasp. “My, my, is that a present for Marinette?”

Adrien blinked and stared down at the shopping bag that he was clutching in his hands. “O-Oh, uh. Sort of. Not really. It’s just something I thought I’d pick up on the way here.”

Tom leaned in conspiratorially. “What is it?”

“Tom, leave the boy be.”

“Let me have a little fun.”

“You ought to be letting him  _ eat.” _

“Oh, you worry too much. Look at him, he looks plenty strong!”

“He could afford some meat on his bones. You know, I’m sure I could pack a proper lunch for you in no time at all — ”

“Will the two of you ease up please? You’re being so embarrassing.” 

Adrien peeked around Tom and audibly sighed in relief when Marinette came down the stairs from the apartment building and into the bakery, fixing the bun on the top of her head. 

Sabine touched a hand to her cheek. “Oh, sweetie, you look absolutely precious. You’re wearing the dress I bought you last week!”

“Ah, don’t worry so much Marinette,” Tom chortled. “We were all just chatting. All innocent!”

Marinette reached up and poked him on the nose. “I know you better than that, Papa, stop being nosy. We’re just going to hang out for a few hours, that’s all.”

“I was there, Marinette,” Tom smirked knowingly. “Plus, I know a date when I see one.”

“Do tell us about it when you get back, alright?”

“And remember to take plenty of pictures!”

Marinette gripped Adrien’s hand in her own and cut in forcefully. “We’re  _ going now! _ Bye Maman, bye Papa. I’ll see you both for dinner.” 

She started dragging them out the door, keeping her face down to hide her blush, while Adrien waved over his shoulder. “I-It was nice seeing you both again! I’ll get her back before it gets dark!”

It wasn’t until the store bell had rung and the door had shut behind them that Marinette covered her face with both of her hands and peeked out at Adrien from between her fingers. “I’m so so so sorry about them,” she muttered. “They’re not usually like that.”

Adrien chuckled and waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t even worry about it. It’s honestly really charming.”

“Or really invasive.”

“Ah, they mean well. I don’t mind, honest.” She still didn’t look pacified, and was instead staring down at her small red purse that she kept opening and closing the clasp to, nibbling on her lip in annoyance. He took a moment to take in the scarlet dress she was wearing and decided to change the subject. “You look really pretty today. I like the dress.”

Marinette’s head lifted, and she ran one of her hands down the skirt without realizing it. “T-Thanks!” she smiled. “I haven’t really had a good opportunity to wear it since Maman bought it for me. She always says I should wear more red.”

“I agree,” Adrien said. “Red really suits you. Almost like you were meant to wear it.”

He bit his lip at his own little sly comment, and he watched in amusement when Marinette took half a breath longer to respond than she usually did. “I guess I’ll have to update my closet.” She cleared her throat and gestured to him vaguely. “Y-You look handsome too!”

Adrien nodded in thanks as he adjusted the collar to the green button down he was wearing. He agonized over finding one that matched the exact color of his eyes during his transformation before finally settling for this one. He even picked out his only pair of black jeans and black trainers just to stay true to his color scheme. “Just pulling out some clothes I never wore,” he said. 

Marinette touched her bangs while staring at the top of his head. “You, uh….you parted your hair differently.”

He decided at the last minute — literally as he was walking out the door — to stop in front of the mirror in the foyer and fix the part of his hair to look like how he styled it when he was Chat Noir. It would probably look innocuous to anyone else staring at him in the street since it wasn’t exactly an uncommon hairstyle, but he hoped that it would spark some sort of familiarity for Marinette. She was tilting her head and squinting her eyes a little as if she were trying to puzzle out a riddle that he had just given her, but he figured it wouldn’t be too much fun if he let her figure it out all at once before their date even started. “Aw, thanks! I thought I’d try something different.”

“Yeah,” Marinette said, sounding as if her thoughts were still half somewhere else. “Definitely different.” She pursed her lips for a moment, shook her head, and lifted her arms. “Alright. Well. I’m ready when you are!”

“Perfect. But first….” He lifted a finger as he revealed the shopping bag he had been holding earlier and pulled out a small box of treats. “I stopped by the chocolate shop near school and thought you might want some.”

Marinette’s eyes immediately lit up. “I love that place! What did you get?”

“Oh, uh, dark chocolate truffles I think?” Adrien said, trying to sound unsure. “I just thought they looked good so — ”

“They’re my  _ favorites! _ ” she said excitedly. “Oooh, can I try one?”

Adrien laughed. “Of course. I got them for you.” Admittedly he was cheating a little. Ladybug had told him a while ago that she went to that same chocolate shop all the time and always got the same order of dark chocolate truffles when she went, claiming that they were one of the few things in existence that would perk her up after a particularly terrible day. It was definitely information that she’d never shared with Adrien, so he had to at least make it seem as if he’d guessed her favorite on accident. Either way, a really self-indulgent part of him just wanted to see what it would be like to see her get excited over something like chocolates. He wasn’t at all disappointed. 

She gently grabbed the box from him and immediately popped a chocolate into her mouth, humming in delight at the flavor. “Ugh. You’re amazing.”

“I try,” he teased. “Anyway, now we both get a snack in beforehand. I feel bad not eating your mother’s pastries.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “You look just fine, you know. She always tells me I look too skinny too. I think it’s a maternal thing.”

Adrien shrugged and took a huge bite of the cheese danish. “Hey. Who am I to turn down free food?” He chewed thoughtfully as he stared down at Marinette’s feet and nodded in satisfaction. “Flats. Very smart choice.”

Marinette raised a brow and smirked. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. You’ll see. You don’t mind a fifteen minute walk, do you?”

“No, but are you seriously going to keep me in the dark about this still?” Marinette complained. “You can at least give me a hint to where we’re going.”

“The hint is that I’m pretty sure you’re going to like it.”

“That’s not a hint!”

“It’s the best hint you’re getting. Let me be mysterious, huh?”

“Hm. I’m only humoring you because you brought me chocolate.”

“Be patient! Trust me. It’s a good surprise.” 


	4. Date

Adrien realized after the first five minutes of their walk that he sort of forgot what you were supposed to do during a date.

He only ever really went on one date. It was with another model from a photoshoot he did a few months back, and it was only because the girl was being so insistent. She decided on every single location they went to, she clung to him throughout the entire evening, was gushing about three dates in the future, and she almost pulled him into a kiss at the end of the date before Adrien ducked away from it and hurried down the block. Nino assured him that’s _not_ how dates were supposed to go — they were supposed to be fun, no-pressure chances to hang out with someone you liked. If kissing and handholding happened to fall into that, then so be it. It all depended on the person.

Sure that _sounded_ reasonable, but Adrien was trying to figure out how romance was supposed to fit into this. Talking wasn’t a problem for the two of them. Thankfully, Marinette and Adrien were at the very least able to keep a light conversation. Adrien was trying to sneak chocolates away from Marinette and Marinette was running up the block away from him and stuffing as many in her cheeks as she could. It was how they always interacted when they hung out with their friends. But this was a date. Was he allowed to hold her hand? Were chocolates too romantic to bring? Not romantic enough? Should he even be _trying_ to be romantic? Was it alright to kiss her? Adrien thought of taking his cue from her, but so far everything felt normal sans the fact that they dressed up a little more than usual and that they had an itinerary for just the two of them. Not that he minded that, but….he wanted this to be just a little different. He wanted it to feel different. He wanted Marinette to notice the difference.

Adrien tried to remember what Nino told him after an enthusiastic Alya had hung up to go rant to Marinette. “Don’t force things, dude. If something’s meant to happen, it’ll happen. Just make sure you both have fun. That’s what matters.”

He took a huge gulp of air. Nino was right. Just show her a good time. Everything else will fall into place.

They were in the middle of a heated debate about white chocolate — Adrien insisting that it was delicious, and Marinette insisting that it wasn’t even chocolate to begin with — that Marinette didn’t even notice that they stopped in front of a huge building in the middle of the block. She turned around, stared up at the sign at the top of the door, and gaped. “No you didn’t….”

Adrien held the door open for her. “After you, Mademoiselle.”

The arcade he took her to was one that Adrien used to run away to when he was annoyed with his father and asked Chloe to cover for him and tell no one where he went. It was perfect because he could always use his allowance to buy as many tokens as he wanted, win thousands of tickets, and always go home with one of the more expensive prizes, which always left him feeling a bit better. He’d need it since he always came home to a lecture. But as often as he and Marinette bonded over video games, he never ever thought to take the two of them here. Based on the way she was gawking at all of the games, noise, and excitement, Adrien figured this was a long time coming. He nudged her in the arm and grinned. “Down for a little competition?”

Marinette snorted. “You are playing with fire there, buddy.”

Adrien pulled out a few notes of money and waved them in front of her face. “We’ll see.”

He went to the purchase counter and dramatically gave Marinette a bag of fifty tokens a moment later. Her eyes widened at the weight as she hugged them to her chest. “This is so many! Are you trying to blast a whole day here?”

He pointed above her head to the high priced prizes hanging above the counter. “Eh, I’m sort of eyeing that huge Ladybug plush. It’s 120,000 tickets. I think 100 tokens is enough to get that, huh?”

Marinette scoffed. “And what makes you think I’m going to help you get that?”

“Alright, how about this?” Adrien countered. “We both pool together our tickets to get the plush. _But_ the one who wins the most tickets gets to keep it.”

“Okay, I’ll take that bet,” Marinette grinned.

“As an additional challenge though!” he quickly interrupted. “A DDR contest to win additional bragging rights.”

“Well that’s a mistake. You’re going to lose that one. Or are you forgetting the last time the three of you came to my house?”

“Um, I’ve _changed_ since then, _Marinette_. I have a dance machine in my room, for heaven’s sake.”

She leaned an elbow against the glass counter. “You make it sound as if that’s going to help you.”

“I’ve grown a lot since our last battle,” Adrien replied sagely. “I’ve improved. I’ve been practicing. _Waiting_.”

“Yeah, you’re still losing.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Too late.”

“Your funeral.”

Turns out, Adrien wasn’t as good at Dance Dance Revolution as he thought. Oh he broke his high score alright, and for a while the two of them were looking pretty good together. But once Marinette cranked up the difficulty he was a goner. Eventually, he had to stop in the middle of the song, lean back against the bars, and just watch her decimate him with the kind of accuracy that only someone like Ladybug could ever display. He didn’t even feel that bad when she grabbed all of her tickets and waved them in his face with a victorious little smile on her face. Instead he did a gracious bow, chivalrously admitted defeat, and smirked deviously when he jutted his chin toward the old-fashioned arcade games in the corner. “Pac Man. Centipede. Galaga. In that order. Let’s go.”

After an hour, Adrien decided that, no matter what happened between them, he and Marinette were definitely coming back here. She seemed really peeved off that he was beating her scores times three in all of the old arcade games tucked away in the corner. He insisted it was because he had the machines in his room and on the days when he was grounded and bored with watching television, he would play those games for hours at a time, but Marinette would hear none of it. Instead she swore that she would beat him at all of these machines one day and dragged them over to the Mecha Strike game where she knew they would rack up the most tickets.

He didn’t know why, but there was something really charming about seeing her run around the arcade, switching to different games, acting so determined, competitive, and passionate about the little wager Adrien presented her with. A really self indulgent part of him hoped that would be the case because it just made him want to laugh. He’d look at her leaning over a game, her tongue poking out from the corner of her mouth in concentration, and suddenly feel so elated that he didn’t know what else to do with all of the feelings. It got to a point where he sort of forgot he was supposed to be playing games and trying to beat Marinette’s count. Sometimes, when she was really absorbed, he’d just lean against the edge of the machine and watch her play, not seeing a reason to rip his eyes from the sight.

After two and a half hours, the two of them ran up to the counter and slammed their tangled piles of tickets atop the counter. Their eyes were both glued to the ticket counter that the employee was feeding their winnings into, and Marinette immediately jumped up into the air and screamed in victory when Adrien’s count came up 200 short of hers.

She reached up and poked him in the cheeks. “Bragging rights~!”

“Fine, fine,” he grinned. “You win. Bragging rights for the month.”

Marinette winked. “Thank you.”

He bit his lip and felt his face grow warm, but he ignored it in favor of turning back to the counter. “What’s our count?”

“130,000,” the employee responded. “Grab whatever you want.”

Adrien pointed to the Ladybug plush hanging just above their heads. “I believe you won that fair and square.”

Marinette smiled at him as she took the doll from the employee and hugged it to her chest. “Good game, sir,” she teased.

“Makes more sense for you to have it,” Adrien decided. “You scream Ladybug more than I do.”

She raised her brows at the comment, allowing Adrien to meet the stare, but she decided to skim over the comment. “You don’t seem too peeved off that you lost.”

“Why would I be?”

“Wouldn’t anyone?”

“I’m not much of a sore loser.”

“So why make a bet like that if you didn’t care about winning?”

Adrien looked down for a moment, drummed his fingers on the inside of his pocket, and took up her hand in his. “You really underestimate the honor of losing to a lovely lady such as yourself.” He winked before he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, holding her hand there until her face was so flushed it crawled all the way up to her ears.

It may have been a little heavy handed, something that he might have only tried if he were Chat Noir and knew that his theatrics would only be seen as that, but the moment seemed too right. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was acting opposed to himself. This was still him, despite how few opportunities he had to act like this in front of Marinette. He wanted to push things just a little bit, show Marinette the bits and pieces of himself shining through in new and exciting ways in the hopes that she would put two and two together into a gradual realization. He let her hand drop and bit on his lips, suddenly feeling some of her own embarrassment wash over him. Adrien watched as her eyes raked over him quickly, taking in all parts of him as if he had finally done something to make her reevaluate what was in front of her.

Marinette looked like she’d wanted to say something, had suddenly furrowed her brows and bit on the insides of her cheeks, pondering something that Adrien couldn’t guess. He wished he had the courage to just pull her into a quiet corner and just _explain_ everything, but he knew she’d kill him for daring to tell her something to casually, no matter how desperately he wanted her to know. All he could do was stand there, watching the gears begin to creak and move in her head, until he stared at the clock on the far wall and jumped in shock. “Oh, crap. We’re gonna be late!”

“Late?” Marinette asked. She watched him as he stuffed his wallet back into his pocket and grabbed Marinette’s wrist, rushing her to the exit of the arcade. “Wait, we’re going somewhere else?”

“Yup!” Adrien laughed. “We’ve gotta jump on the metro now if we’re gonna catch it before it leaves.”

Marinette was sputtering behind him as they ran through the crowds outside. “Before _what_ leaves?!”

“Don’t worry about it!”

“ _Adrien!”_

They only just managed to catch the train when it rolled into the station closest to the arcade, and Adrien spent most of the ride laughing through all of Marinette’s guesses for where he was taking her next, refuting one outlandish suggestion after another. It was rather funny because he knew how much both Ladybug and Marinette hated being left out of the loop and not having control of the situation. The only thing he could do was assure her that is was nothing bad, that she was definitely enjoy it, and that she’d just have to patient.

Adrien kept staring down at his watch while they rushed out the station and made their way to the part of the Seine that was right at the base of the Eiffel Tower. It was when they were heading closer to the bank and heading towards where the Bateaux Parisiens boats were docked that Marinette’s mouth fell open and she tapped on Adrien’s shoulder. “Are we going on the boat tours?!”

He turned over his shoulder excitedly and nodded. “Cool, huh?”

After they defeated Le Dessinateur, the topic of boat rides and dates came up during their next patrol. He was telling Ladybug in detail about the date that Le Dessinateur set up for Marinette, and of course it only made sense to him now why it seemed like he was telling her a story that she had heard already before. But either way, Chat Noir was going on and on about how much that akuma must have been in love with her to pull out such a romantic date like that. He’d never been on a boat tour himself, but he heard so many stories of tourists hailing them as romantic hot spots and couples constantly getting engaged on the dinner cruises. Ladybug merely shrugged her shoulders and said that she’d never been on one of the boat tours either, but that if she ever did decide to go on one, she’d be sure to tell him whether all the hype was accurate. What better time to find out then now?

They managed to make it just two minutes before the boat was supposed to leave. Adrien flashed their two tickets and sighed in relief when they were able to board the boat and lean against the rails on the side. It wasn’t long before the bridge to board the boat was removed, and the long ship started gliding along the water. Thankfully, it was still really early in the year and there weren’t too many tourists to crowd the boats, which meant that it was easy for the two of them to get some peace and quiet during the ride.

Marinette pouted as they both leaned their elbows on the rails and looked down at the water. “You didn’t tell me you were going to pay for this much.”

“I mean, it’s honestly no trouble,” Adrien promised. “I save up my allowances and never really get the chance to splurge. This is nothing, I promise.”

“Still,” Marinette sighed. “I don’t want to make you think like you have to cover everything. If you had told me, I would’ve paid for a ticket.”

The wind was picking up and blowing strands of hair out of Marinette’s bun, and he carefully reached up to tuck them back in. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really just wanted to surprise you. I didn’t mean to be weird.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not weird, it’s just…” She pursed her lips and hummed. “I guess….I was sort of shocked you’d go through this much trouble. It’s a little surprising is all. A good surprise! I appreciate it, honest I do. But….well, anyway.”

“I get what you mean don’t worry,” Adrien replied. “I just wanted to show you a good time is all. I guess I didn’t really put any thought into all of this being overkill. I was just thinking of making it all fun, you know?”

Marinette nodded. “I understand. And this is fun! I’ve never been on one of these boat tours before. Just….one of those touristy things you never do because you live here and all that.”

Adrien bit his lip and hoped he wasn’t being too obvious. “I heard these things are supposed to be really romantic. You know, people get engaged here all the time and people have their anniversaries here too. I mean, I’ve never been on one of these sightseeing boats before, but I guess I get it.”

“That’s funny,” Marinette chuckled, staring at him from the corner of her eyes. “A good friend of mine said the same thing.”

He tried to make his smile not seem too wide. “Really? What did you tell him?”

Marinette turned his body to face Adrien’s. “That on the off chance I ever wound up on one I’d tell him if it was romantic or not.”

Adrien raised a brow and looked around him. “Well, this seems like as good a time as any.”

“This is true. Although….” She swallowed when he dared take a step closer to her. “I-I, uh….don’t really know what counts as romantic on one of these things. Especially since we know the city so well.”

“Well,” Adrien sighed. “I’ll admit. We’re delving out of my comfort zone. But if the lady wants a romantic boat ride, then the lady will certainly get one.”

Marinette giggled. “How chivalrous of you.”

He made a show of drumming his fingertips against his chin in thought, leaving Marinette a smiling mess beside him. “Got it! Releasing a thousand and one rose petals into the wind right at sunset, standing at the bow of the boat, and letting the smell of the breeze and roses sweep you away into a dashing evening of romance.”

Marinette nodded in approval. “Oh yes, that sounds wonderful. I assume you have the rose petals ready.”

Adrien scoffed. “Of course. They’re merely waiting for my cue.”

“And what else do you have planned?” Marinette teased.

He pointed to the water. “Three dolphins will come jumping right out of the water! They’ll make heart-shaped arcs of water and blow kisses before they dive back down.”

Marinette placed a hand against her heart. “ _Dolphins!_ ” she gasped. “Surely you purchased them on your own?”

“Ah but of course,” Adrien said, turning his nose up. “Trained them myself.”

“And I suppose you have a singing troupe ready to go too.”

“Ah, I almost forgot about the singing troupe! But you’re right! They’re below deck waiting for the right signal.”

Marinette whistled. “My, my. This sounds _mighty_ romantic. You truly are an expert.”

Adrien shrugged. “Just doing my best. But there’s more, you know.”

“Let me guess,” Marinette smirked. “A pair of violinists will come out from the crowd and start playing a song just for the two of us as we stare out at the river, sighing over the sights, and smiling for the future.”

Adrien dipped his head and was feeling his chest ache from all the chortling he was doing, but right when he was about to quip back with another response, he felt someone tap him on his shoulder. An old man with a violin in his hands kindly tipped his hat to Adrien and Marinette and gestured behind him to four other musicians who were leaning against the rails, smiling into their hands and waving at Adrien and Marinette. Adrien raised a brow and tentatively waved back as the older man spoke up. “Apologies, son,” he said. “A few of us couldn’t help but overhear. You wouldn’t mind terribly if we offered a little ambiance? It’d be our pleasure. We could use the practice.”

Adrien furrowed his brows and blinked. “U-Um….I don’t….I mean — ”

The man chuckled and leaned in close to Adrien. “Indulge us a little, eh? You two are a darling couple. Plus what better way to impress a sweet girl like that?”

There wasn’t any time for Adrien to even fashion an intelligible response before the man stepped back, lifted his instrument, and played a high, warbling note before his companions joined in and harmonized with the melody he carried. Two women behind him were still smiling up to their ears at the sight of the two embarrassed teens in front of them, and the old man sent one last wink at Adrien before he turned around to face the crowd that was beginning to form around them. It was a song that Adrien recognized, but couldn’t remember the words to, but it was a calm, light, slow number that warmed him down to his bones. He turned back to Marinette who was looking up at him in shock. She finally let the corner of her mouth quirk up as she moved close enough for the skirt of her dress to brush against his knees, keeping the doll she’d won earlier tucked carefully under her arm. “Did you plan _that_?” she asked.

Adrien hesitated before sighing and holding his arms out helplessly. “Cost me a fortune.”

Marinette dipped her head and laughed behind her bangs. She surprised him by taking both his hands in both of hers, swinging them gently back and forth, and staring up at him shyly. “Thanks for this,” she told him. “This was really sweet of you. I’m having fun.”

He swore he could have melted on the spot right there and died happy because that was all he really wanted to hear. Adrien adjusted his grip and rubbed his thumbs on the backs of her knuckles. “You don’t know how much of a relief it is to hear you say that.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding me?” Adrien said. “I was nervous as heck. I’ve been up for hours just thinking about this. I….well, I don’t go on dates often. Never really planned one before. I wanted to make sure it went well.”

“You shouldn’t worry so much,” Marinette assured him. “Honestly. I really really like the boat ride.”

Adrien grinned hopefully. “Romantic enough?”

“Jury’s still out, but I’m optimistic.”

“I have a feeling your friend will be happy to hear that.”

“Yeah,” Marinette said slowly. “I’m sure he would.”

The rest of the time on their boat was something Adrien could have plucked out of a picture book. They eventually started playing little spying games that lasted for ages and pointing out random passerby to see who could come up with the most elaborate story to fit the person. Eventually, Marinette was leaning her cheek against his shoulder, laughing through his dramatic stories of espionage and tumultuous romance based purely off of a simple flower shopkeeper. Adrien even convinced her into a long string of selfies with the buildings and river as the backdrop because they owed their friends and her parents pictures. Every now and again, the group of musicians would stop and start playing more songs during the ride, letting the music lilt gently in the background and make Adrien feel this strange lethargic sense of contentment that he supposed could only really come from staring out at a river, only an hour before sunset, listening to beautiful music, and letting a beautiful girl lean her head on his shoulder. It was strangely addicting, so much so that he wished rather belatedly that he’d bought off five more tickets so that they could just keep going up and down the river for hours, long after the sun went down, long after the rest of the passengers had left for their homes.

He initially had every intentions to take Marinette home once they reached the end of the route, but he realized that when they got off the boat a couple of hours later, they were right on the bank that he and Ladybug used to frequent a lot whenever they decided to skip rocks across the river. It was an intimate little pastime the two of them indulged in, a time where they screamed frustrations out at each other, rambled on and on about worries and fears until there was nothing left to say, leaving them in nothing but the sounds of stones skipping across the water and finally dipping down deep with a final thlunk. Adrien didn’t want to go home just yet, so he asked Marinette if she was a fan of skipping rocks, and was relieved when she answered yes.

They stopped by a park a couple of blocks away and walked along the path, trying to find flat stones that were good for skipping. All the while Adrien was making a show of jumping behind bushes and rolling under benches to try to find what he quoted as “the perfect skipping stones.” He left Marinette practically suffocating from hysterics as she held her Ladybug doll to her face and tried to muffle her laughter. He was sure they looked like a strange sight — two teenagers with literal armfuls of stones walking towards the river — but it seemed to Adrien at least that they were running off with their own little inside joke and it made him giddy that Marinette was willing to indulge him.

They stood at the very edge of the river where a few people were still sitting and dangling their legs over the water. The two of them left their things a few feet away from them right along the edge of the walkway as they piled their stones at their feet. Just like he figured, Marinette was much better at it than he was. He kept betting silly things like all the notes in his wallet, his entire collection of Japanese films, all the Gabriel suits in his closet, and a month of his servitude that he would be able to skip his rock farther than hers, but as long as it kept Marinette happy Adrien didn’t mind making himself look like a fool.

“You keep throwing the stones weird,” she finally told him, wiping away hysterical tears from her eyes. “Like you flick your wrist all strange.”

“Really?” Adrien pouted. “Thought for sure I was getting better….”

Marinette scratched her head. “No, I mean, it’s funny you….you throw it just like a friend of mine does. You do it at a weird angle so your stone just sinks the moment you throw it.”

“Huh,” Adrien thought, trying to keep a knowing smile off his face. “Common mistake I guess.”

“You would think,” Marinette snorted. She turned a stone in her hand and mimed a throw. “Hold it just like this. And don’t flick it so hard.”

Adrien sucked on his bottom lip and stared out at the river. He stared at Marinette’s hands one more time, waited until she nodded in approval at his hand positioning and tried his best to flick it just a little more gently than he had been doing before. He got excited when it skipped three times, but then it promptly sunk deep into the river and disappeared.

“Agh,” Adrien complained. “Well. One more than last time.”

Marinette nudged him with her elbow. “You’re kinda bad at this.”

“I’ll get better eventually,” he promised. “As often as I’m here doing this, I have to eventually get really good. That’s how practice works.”

Marinette cast out another stone, making Adrien whistle when it skipped six times. “Didn’t know you come here a lot.”

“I have a friend that’s really good at it,” Adrien explained. “She took me here one time when we were bored and I guess it’s just sort of become a habit between the two of us. It’s really fun at night. There’s usually no one around and we can be as loud as we want, say what what we want.”

Adrien eyed Marinette carefully when she answered him. “....sounds nice. I can definitely see why that’s relaxing.”

“It is!” Adrien agreed. “She was actually the one that got me into it. Wasn’t a huge fan of it at first.”

Marinette tapped her flat stone against the palm of her hand and glanced at him warily. “Why’s that?”

“I guess I just thought it was really boring when I first tried it,” he began to explain. “I’m always used to being busy and using my free time to do something productive like study and plan the rest of my week. So I guess doing something so aimless felt really silly at first, even if it was meant to be relaxing. But, the way she explained it to me made a lot of sense.”

She was turned completely towards him now, paying more attention to his story than the stones at her feet. “What was that?”

Adrien squinted at the river, threw another stone, and watched it skip four times. He pumped his fist and grinned. “I guess that….that it’s okay to take breaks and do something mindless once in awhile. Not everything has to have a use, a purpose, or an explanation. Sometimes things like….I dunno….like a DDR contest or skipping rocks at sunset only ever has to be that. Or sometimes you don’t have to think for hours about all the implications and consequences of asking someone out. Maybe you just do it because you want to and because it feels right. Simplicity can be its own kind of excitement you know?”

There was silence between the two of them after he finished, and Adrien was too scared to see the look on Marinette’s face. He could tell that she was frozen, her eyes still on him as he skipped more rocks by himself, but there was no way he was willing to look at her face and see her expression just yet. The air felt too tense and Adrien sort of wanted to apologize just to fill up the space. But Marinette beat him by clearing her throat, drumming her nails against the stone in her hands, and saying quietly, “....I told you that.”

Adrien tried to sound casual. “What?”

“Simplicity can be its own kind of excitement. It’s okay to do something mindless. Not everything has to have meaning,” Marinette repeated. “ _I_ told you all that. Remember?”

Adrien clenched his teeth to keep himself from smiling, and inhaled deeply to try and sober up his expression. He finally turned his head to look at her, and she was staring up at him imploringly, almost as if she were begging him for an answer, as if that answer was more important than anything that had happened today. He shook his head, though, and said, “When?”

“A-A few weeks ago,” she began tentatively. “It was over lunch. You were complaining about your father cramming your schedule full again for the year. It was when we were reminding you to break your routine and take breaks from it for a while. And then I….” Marinette sighed out and frowned. “I told you all of that. Because I-I….I was worried about you. You remember that, don’t you?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Right, right,” he finally decided. “I remember it now. That was the day I went to my father and lightened my load a little. Because you suggested it to me.”

Marinette nodded. “Exactly.”

“Sorry, I guess I remembered it wrong for a minute,” Adrien apologized. “It’s really easy to mix you and my other friend together in my head I guess. You both sound really alike.”

Marinette breathed in sharply, but said nothing in response. There was no way to know what was going on in her head, and Marinette didn’t seem like she wanted to share. Chat Noir always knew when Ladybug was pondering something serious when she stayed quiet for extremely long stretches of time, mouthing things to herself, and staying in her own head until she’d come to a decision or was sure about what she wanted to say. Adrien could tell Marinette was doing the same exact thing, scowling at herself and muttering very quiet things under her breath as she finally released the stone she’d been holding. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad sign — if it meant she was annoyed he’d forgotten, if she figured something out, if she finally knew, or if she was very close to knowing. There wasn’t any of the unbelievable and outlandish shock that Adrien had been expecting, and if anything this made him even more anxious. He didn’t know how he was supposed to act now, didn’t know where to push their conversation to save the mood of the day.

Adrien looked down and saw they only had a handful of stones left. “Want to finish throwing these and head home? It’s starting to get late.”

“O-Oh, yeah,” Marinette assured, still looking distracted. “I’ll text Maman that we’re on our way.”

The metro back to Marinette’s house was quiet. They caught two seats next to each other towards the back of the car, and the moment they sat down Marinette leaned her head on Adrien’s shoulder and dozed off for the entire ride. Adrien was on his phone, sorting through all of the photos they’d taken on the boat, reminding himself to text them to her when he had the chance. He stopped on his favorite — one where the lighting was just right, with Marinette’s arms wrapped around his waist, her cheek pressed against his — and made it his background.

Luckily, the station was only a couple of short blocks from the bakery. Marinette was clinging to his arm, leaving Adrien amused. “Tired?”

She hummed into the fabric of his shirt. “I usually nap on the weekends and catch up on sleep. I’m tired….”

“Don’t worry, I can see the the bakery right now. You can sleep until noon tomorrow just like you want.”

When they got closer to the door of the bakery — all the lights shut off for the evening — Marinette didn’t let go of his arm. Instead she turned around and pulled him with her until her back was pressed against the door and Adrien was standing incredibly closer and looking down at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Marinette said. “Just don’t want to say bye yet.”

Adrien bit his lip when her hands settled on the crooks of his elbows. He clenched his fingers before slowly moving his hands towards her hips, letting his hands grip the fabric of the dress. “Your parents are expecting you.”

“Just five minutes.”

He snorted and figured that he might as well follow her lead. Marinette’s hands were creeping up his arms, resting on his shoulders, before they wrapped gently around his neck. Adrien dared to take a step closer to her until their noses were only several centimeters apart. It felt like the right time to _do_ something — to close the space or drag his hands elsewhere or move his gaze — but he had no idea what he should’ve been trying. Instead he swallowed audibly. “Are you alright, by the way? You were quiet on the way home.”

She nodded. “I’m fine. Just….thinking.”

“About what?”

“Lots of things.”

“Nothing bad I hope,” he muttered in the space between their lips.

“No,” Marinette whispered. “They’re confusing things, is all. I’m not sure what to do with it all.”

“Confusing?”

“Mmhm,” she hummed, feeling her fingers brush along the skin on the back of his neck. “You confuse me.”

Adrien moved his hands to curl around her waist. “Why?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re thinking. It feels like there’s something you want to say, but I’m not quite sure what it is. I only have guesses.”

A part of him really wanted to ask her what sort of guesses she had, and what sort of questions and confusions she was trying to answer, but he was far too wound up and nervous to dare ask the question outright. “I don’t know what I mean either,” he answered honestly. “I’m good with words, not with saying what I mean.”

Marinette smirked. “I had a feeling that was the case.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Just a feeling.”

Adrien suddenly felt his heart start to pound faster, either do to nerves, excitement, or their sheer proximity. “I guess I have to get better about that. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to end a date and leave the other person confused.”

“Everything was perfect, don’t worry,” she assured him. “I’m happy. It was a wonderful date. 10/10.”

“The raving review is appreciated.”

Marinette flicked him in the nose and left him beaming. She licked her lips for a moment, let her eyes dart to his mouth, and quickly pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you.”

Adrien felt his cheek warm right where her lips used to be and took a few seconds to find his voice again. “It was my pleasure.”

When Marinette pulled away from the kiss, it left their mouths just a little bit closer. Adrien wasn’t sure what the decorum was about kisses on the first date, but they were already here, Marinette wasn’t moving away, and it would really be so simple to just lean in a touch and indulge in the small pleasure. He desperately wanted to do it. He could feel Marinette curling her fingers into the hair on the back of his neck, pulling herself up gently on her toes, pulling him in with a sort of urgency that he knew meant she wouldn’t mind if he did decide to do it. Adrien exhaled, and Marinette mimicked him, his warm breath furling across his skin. He was so close to leaning in and closing the distance, Marinette’s fingers already curling tighter into his hair out of anticipation, but a ringtone sounded loudly in the silence and shocked them apart.

Adrien felt like he’d suddenly been submerged in cold water as Marinette fiddled around in her purse and silenced her cell phone. She pursed her lips. “It’s Maman. I should probably go upstairs.”

“Y-Yeah,” Adrien said. “That sounds like a good idea.”

He took a reluctant four steps away from her and clapped his hands together. “Well. I guess, I’ll just head home then.”

“Oh wait,” Marinette said. “Share your location with me? So that I know you get home alright.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

“I know. But my parents will no doubt ask, and I’d rather show them proof.”

Adrien chuckled, pulled out his phone, and tapped around a bit until Marinette got a notification on her phone. “Alright, there you go. I’ll even text you when I get home, okay?”

“Okay.” She picked up her arcade prize from the ground and hugged it to her chest. “Good night, Adrien,” she told him. “Get home safe.”

Adrien grinned, and decided to go for one last Hail Mary as bent down into a gentlemanly bow. “Good night, my Lady.”

He didn’t wait around to see Marinette’s expression or to hear her response. He quickly turned around and made his way down the block towards his own house, refusing to speed up until he heard the sound of the bakery door shutting behind him in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter left :)


	5. Kiss

“Should I have kissed her?”

Adrien was laying on the floor, his arms and legs splayed out carelessly, with a pillow over his face that was muffling his words. The moment he’d gotten home and finally had the chance to freak out in private, he screamed into his pillow for a few minutes — he needed to remember to apologize for judging Marinette for that because _wow_ was it helpful — and collapsed onto the floor, unable to move. He felt excited, restless, and emotionally exhausted all at the same time and he wasn’t sure how to deal with all of that. He couldn’t tell if his heart was racing because of the adrenaline left over from being _so close_ to Marinette only minutes before or the anxiety over what she was thinking, what she was doing right now, and the fact that he was going to be seeing her again for patrol in only a few minutes.

And the fact that he _definitely_ could have kissed her had he been quicker about it.

Adrien groaned and blindly reached a hand out. “Plagg? I need assistance and counsel.”

“You _need_ to get a grip.”

He left his hand flop uselessly on the ground. “Should I have kissed her?” he repeated.

Plagg sighed and sat on Adrien’s stomach. “I don’t know. Should you have?”

“I mean, maybe?” Adrien thought. “It seemed like I was supposed to. We were so close to each other and Marinette wasn’t saying no….ugh, but she wasn’t saying yes either and I didn’t know what she wanted me to do and I didn’t want to end the night weird or make it uncomfortable.”

Plagg shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have kissed her.”

Adrien paused for a moment. “....but she had her arms around my neck and she initiated the proximity! Plus she kissed me on the cheek and didn’t move away from my face. I mean, maybe I’m bad at reading signals or maybe I shouldn’t ever assume, but I would think that’s a sign that a person wants you to kiss them. I hesitated and we were interrupted but maybe I still should’ve done it?”

“Yeah,” Plagg said. “You should’ve done it.”

“But it was _only_ our first date! I know Nino said not to worry about that sort of thing but we were friends and partners before this. I don’t want to rush or force the romance before she’s ready, you know? But _am I_ forcing romance? We matched on a dating app, doesn’t that mean stuff like kissing is okay? Ugh, but I don’t _know_ that, I wish you could just read other people’s minds so that you don’t have to go through all of this! But I feel like every normal functioning person can pick up on body language. Am I just an idiot then?”

“Kid!” Plagg shouted. “You have a _brain_ for a _reason_ . Your crazy catastrophic thoughts belong in there. Not out in the open. I mean for the love of camembert, you’re stressing _me_ out. Didn’t your date go fine?”

“No it did!” Adrien insisted. “It was….it was really, really great. Amazing.” He didn’t bother boring Plagg with all the details about how gorgeous Marinette looked today, how adorable it was to see her smiling all day, how he really had to think far, far back to remember a day that had left his cheeks hurting and his body breathless at the end of it because of how wonderful it had been. He really wished he could just curl up in his bed and focus on all of that — all of the bright, warm feelings that made him want to giggle and dance in victory around his room. But Adrien knew there were other things far more complicated than romance that he needed to think about first.

Adrien removed the pillow from his face and looked down at his kwami. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I think this is all just secondhand nerves from having to see Ladybug soon. I promised myself that if she didn’t figure it out herself today, I’d tell her straight on myself. It’s just a lot of pressure.”

Plagg sighed. “Why are you so scared?”

Adrien shrugged and turned his head to the side, staring at the shadows under his desk. “I don’t know. I’m afraid she’ll be upset. I wasn’t supposed to find out and I wasn’t supposed to tell her about myself. I broke two of our most important rules and I’m afraid she’s going to be disappointed, our feelings for each other aside.”

“You finding out wasn’t your fault, kid,” Plagg told him. “It was an accident. And you told her you knew and you told her who you are because it’s the next safest option. Sure you sat on it for a week, but you eventually wanted to get the two of you on the same page again. That’s smart. That’s what a Chat Noir should always do: value the safety of himself and his partner.”

Adrien smiled softly and sat up. He rubbed a thumb on the top of Plagg’s head. “That’s a good way to put it. Thanks.”

“Look,” Plagg explained. “I’m not good at this emotional stuff. But that girl seems to trust you a lot, and seems to like you a lot. You gotta have faith that she’s gonna understand your reasoning. You’re not a bad kid, Adrien. You always have good intentions behind the things you do. A sweet girl like that is gonna notice the same thing.”

Adrien nibbled on his lip. “You sure?”

Plagg lifted his arms. “I’m just telling you what I think. Neither of us are going to be sure unless you go straight to the source.”

Adrien nodded. “Makes a lot of sense.”

“And hey, maybe you can ask _her_ if you should’ve kissed her instead of bugging me about it like I have any idea.”

“Aw, but Plagg, you’re half the reason we started texting in the first place! You helped start all this. I’m just keeping you informed about your investments.”

Plagg scowled. “Augh! Just hurry up and transform so that we can end all of this nonsense. I hope you’ll start to be more pleasant to be around. I thought _I_ was supposed to be the exasperating one.”

Adrien laughed and stood on his feet. “Love you too, Plagg. Transform me!”

He looped around the arrondissement for a little bit to clear his head and stretch his legs before Chat Noir started visiting all of their usual haunts to try and find Ladybug. Twenty minutes later, he found her sitting on top of the Arc de Triomphe, her legs swinging over the edge and looking out on the Champs-Élysées, still wearing the bun she had only hours before. He laughed because he could already see people leaning out of their cars and stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to take pictures of Ladybug and videos of him vaulting over the treetops. He landed gracefully on the very top of the monument and greeted her with a bow. “Evening, my Lady.”

“Hey,” she greeted warmly. “I just realized that we haven’t made too many public appearances lately since akumas have been so quiet. So I thought I’d say hi.”

“Wait until tourist season starts up,” Chat Noir snorted as he sat down next to her and waving to a few screaming girls who had camera phones pointed at him. “You’re going to regret that.”

“Eh, we’re used to it by now.” She turned to him and leaned her cheek against her shoulder. “Wanna sit for a bit before we patrol? I don’t feel like doing work yet.”

“I’m never opposed to kicking my feet up.” He leaned back on his hands and stared at the traffic underneath him. He drummed his claws against the stone. “Sooo….anything fun planned this weekend?”

Ladybug shook her head. “Nothing for tomorrow. Catch up on homework I guess. But uh….I….I had a date today, so that’s something.”

Chat Noir tried to look surprised. “A date? With a dashing gentleman? And you didn’t tell me?”

Ladybug raised a brow. “Jealous?”

“Hardly! But we’re friends, I wanna hear how your love life is going. I tell you how my love life is going!”

“I thought you said your love life was stagnant as of last week.”

_Oh the irony_. “Not the point,” he insisted. “So come on. How did it go?”

Ladybug stared at him and chuckled. “It was….sweet. Really, really sweet. We knew each other from before, but we matched on Tinder and he asked me out.” She looked up at the sky and he could see her blushing. “He picked me up at home and brought me chocolates. He took me to an arcade, and then we went on the Seine sightseeing boats. A bunch of musicians were actually on the boat and started playing for us out of nowhere, it was ridiculously romantic. By the way, to answer your question, the key to romantic boat rides is romantic _music_. And we skipped rocks along the river for a bit before he took me home.”

Chat Noir was hanging over her words and was shocked at the abrupt ending. “That’s it? ‘He took you home’? That sounds like a cover up to me.”

“Oh come on, you don’t want to hear all the details about that.”

He smirked devilishly at her. “That sounds like some juicy gossip you’re keeping from me.”

“Well, I mean, nothing _happened_ per se,” she began. “We took the train home. And I was getting tired so I slept on his shoulder the whole way there. And it was nice because he was really warm and comfortable and he kept his arm around me the whole time. He let me hold onto him the whole walk home. And….we were getting closer and closer to my front door and the only thing going through my head was that I didn’t want the day to end. I didn’t want him to leave. It was going to feel so strange to be alone in my room after having spent the whole day with him right next to me.”

Chat Noir blinked, not having realized she’d been so reluctant to leave him and feeling a swell of pride at the news. “Then what?”

Ladybug was looking down into her lap, lacing and unlacing her fingers. “We were at my door. But I wanted him to stay, so we stayed outside for a bit longer. I wasn’t sure really what I wanted from him or what I wanted him to do, but I had my hands on his arms and his shoulders….and he had his hands on my hips….and they felt so warm, Chat, you don’t really appreciate how nice something like that feels until you’re there.”

Chat Noir licked his lips, suddenly feeling himself grow self-conscious. “A-And then?”

Ladybug smiled to herself, lost in her thoughts. “He was really close, and….I wanted to kiss him. But I was afraid at first so I just kissed him on the cheek. But I stayed really close to him, and he stayed really close to me, and we were just _there_ in front of each other. And I could tell he wanted to kiss me back.”

She trailed off her story and Chat Noir tried to pick it back up. “So you kissed?”

“Nah,” she pouted. “Maman called and I had to go upstairs. But it was still nice.”

It was strange to hear the events come from Ladybug, but it was certainly not unpleasant. In fact, the sight of her pink cheeks and her smiling fondly to herself were enough to make Chat Noir giddy, and it was so hard to keep a straight face and pretend like this was just an innocuous story for him. After all, he wasn’t quite sure if she knew just who she was talking to at the moment. Still, Chat Noir knew that he was going to be walking on air for at least the next week no problem.

“Well,” he grinned. “It sounds like you had a great time anyway.”

Ladybug sighed. “Yeah.” She bit her lip, turned her whole body towards Chat Noir, and smirked. “I _really_ wish he had kissed me though.”

Chat Noir shrugged. “Yeah well. Maybe he was nervous too.”

Ladybug frowned. “I guess.” She scooted closer to him until their hips were touching. “Still, it’s so frustrating you know? To get all riled up like that just to be brought right back down. Makes you antsy. Like….I just wanted to run down the block and steal one really quick.”

“R-Really,” he breathed out. “Well, that’s….well.”

She was leaning in closer to him, smiling wistfully. “Or maybe I should’ve just bucked up the courage the first time. Given a kiss on the lips instead of just the cheek. We could’ve kissed for a long while until my mother called.”

The thought was absolutely _wonderful,_ he agreed. “Y-Y-Yeah, that sounds. Ahem! Nice, sounds super nice.”

Ladybug leaned her head even closer until she was leaning on his shoulder again, looking up at him innocently. “Super nice is right,” she muttered. “I get the sense that he’d have been a really good kisser. You know. Someone that gives those nice, lip-biting, toe curling kisses. You know the ones?”

She was _so close_ and staring at him in a way that was making his heart want to beat right out of his chest. “I-I-I-I uh...hahaha….well I mean, I guess, you know, I uh….um….”

And then, as if to finish him off with one final blow, Ladybug leaned up and left a gentle kiss on his jaw. “Do you think we could finally get our kiss tonight?”

The words took a few seconds to register in his head before Chat Noir shook his head and pressed a hand to his chest. “W-Wait, we? _We!_ We as in — ”

Ladybug nodded. “Mmhm.”

“B-But….” he began. “You know that _I’m_ ….and he’s….”

“I know,” she laughed.

Chat Noir felt his forehead wrinkling in confusion. “Wait, so….so you….you know that…. _”_

Ladybug gave him a little mock salute. “Hi Adrien.”

His hands immediately flew up to tug at his hair as he groaned loudly into the sky. “Oh my _God_ you almost gave me a heart attack!”

“What do you mean?” Ladybug snorted. “How are you surprised? Wasn’t this what you wanted?”

“Huh?”

“You were dropping hints all day,” Ladybug explained. "I was getting suspicious towards the end of the date.”

“Oh my God,” Chat Noir exclaimed, his hands pressed to his cheeks now. “That actually _worked_?”

Ladybug nodded with an exasperated smile. “Just about. I mean, at the end of the night I was only like 75% sure, but by the time I was sitting here waiting for you I was positive.”

Chat Noir frowned. “How?”

“Promise not to be mad?”

“What is it?”

Ladybug winced, pulled out her civilian cellphone, and showed him the screen. “....you left your location on after you shared it with me. And unless Adrien is a parkour expert, there’s no way he was vaulting across rooftops and sitting at this exact location if he wasn’t you.”

“Wait. You asked me to share my location with you so that you could see if Adrien and Chat Noir were in the same place at the same time?”

Ladybug shrugged. “Pretty much. I mean it seemed like you wanted me to know, so I figured confirming it for myself was harmless.”

“ _Damn_ ,” he scolded himself. “I didn’t even think of that. That’s so sneaky!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to trick you. I sort of panicked when I asked because so many things were going through my head.”

Chat Noir covered his mouth with both of his hands and tilted his head. “Speaking of which. You’re, uh….you’re taking this better than I thought you would.”

“Well,” Ladybug winced. “I’ve had a few hours to think, process…..scream, cry a little bit, yell at my pillows….” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Anyway, not important. It was obvious that you were letting me know who you were, and it didn’t make sense for you to do that to just _anyone_ , so I figured you knew who I was. And you kept making it seem like you knew who I was the whole day, anyway. Don’t know how you figured it out, but I thought that maybe had something to do with all the hint dropping.”

Chat Noir rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, let’s just say technology has a bad habit of outing our identities. It’s done it twice in a row already.”

“Wait, twice in a row? What was the first time?”

Chat Noir gestured to her phone. “Well….when you matched with Adrien on the roof that day? With me there?”

Ladybug’s eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Shit!” she hissed out. “Oh my god, wait, you’re so right! Of course you….because you were….and then….oh, no _wonder_ you were freaking out that day!”

“Wouldn’t you!? I damn near dropped my phone off the roof!”

“Wow,” Ladybug breathed out, pressing the heels of her palms to her temples. “Wow, wow, wow. This makes so much sense. Ugh, I didn’t even think of what would happen if we matched with each other. We’re so freaking stupid.”

Chat Noir scratched his head. “Well, you can’t have it all, I guess.”

“So,” she stated, trying to piece together all the information. “Was I right? You wanted me to know your identity because you found out mine?”

“Basically,” Chat Noir admitted. “I mean, it just seemed unfair that I knew who you were and that you didn’t. So I thought that making everything even would make more sense. Make it so that we were on the same page.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Ladybug asked. “You know, instead of just dropping hints and hoping I’d figure it out? We could’ve gotten this out of the way so much sooner.”

“I don’t know,” Chat Noir grumbled. “I’m bad at bringing up serious stuff. I was nervous. Our secrets were the one thing that needed to stay a secret and I was afraid you’d get mad that I found out, or that I was telling you who I was. And having to just tell you all that stuff straight on was way too stressful. I’m not that direct.”

Ladybug reached out and rested a hand over his. “I’m not mad,” she promised him. “I know you found out by accident and that you wouldn’t purposefully go snooping. And you’re right. If we’re a team, that means we can’t be unbalanced or have weaknesses or advantages over each other. I mean, we’ll have to be more careful from here on out, but this is fine. I sort of expected we’d find out sooner or later anyway.”

“Hey, we lasted two years,” he said, trying to lighten up the situation. “That’s pretty good!”

Ladybug laughed. “Yeah. I guess it is.” She ran her fingers through his bangs. “Boy, this is….new. You’re going to have to give me a couple of days to get used to this.”

“Don’t worry,” Chat Noir assured. “Pretty much had the same reaction.”

She sucked on her bottom lip thoughtfully. “You know,” Ladybug said, not letting her fingers still. “I was….serious about that kiss.”

Chat Noir raised a brow at her lighthearted tone. “Oh were you?”

“Of course. You can’t leave a girl hanging like that. We get frustrated about these things too you know.”

He chuckled. “So you were frustrated?”

“Mmhm,” she hummed. “I was really mad when I went to my room. Furious.”

Chat Noir reached out for her other hand and pressed a kiss on the inside of her palm. “Terribly sorry about that,” he said. “Wasn’t my intention to leave you unsatisfied.”

She shrugged in return and let her eyes purposefully dart down to his lips. “You don’t have to. We’ve got a little bit of time….”

Chat Noir chuckled and felt his face heating up. “Uh….we have a bit of an audience down there.”

She moved her hands through his hair until she was gripping the hair at the base of neck, just like she had been in front of the bakery only hours before. “I don’t particularly mind unless you do.”

“You’re gonna get us plastered all over the Ladyblog.”

“You’re not stopping me.”

Chat licked his lips, smiled, and let one of his hands soundly grip her hip. “I suppose not.”

Their teeth knocked gently together before anything else because they both leaned in laughing. But then Ladybug closed her lips into a kiss and Chat Noir couldn’t stop the delighted thrill that made his whole body shiver. He could vaguely hear people shouting and screaming in delight below them, probably pulling out phones and cameras to grab photos and videos, but he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care about all the media attention they’d be getting in the morning. Ladybug was sighing into his mouth, bringing a hand up to his cheek, gently curling her fingers against his jaw, and shyly brushing a tongue against his which made him quickly curl his other arm around her back to pull her closer. There was too much perfection rolled into one person that he was afraid his heart might burst. All of a sudden, he understood Marinette not wanting to leave last night. There was nothing about the feel of her lips or the sounds of her gasps or the way her body shifted beneath his fingers that made him want to separate from her. It made him want to plan ten more dates. Make ten more excuses to take her out. Ten more excuses to walk her home. Ten more chances to kiss her at the end of a wonderful evening. He’d be more than happy to play any of those moments on a repeat.

Ladybug was giggling against his lips when she finally pulled away. “We’re supposed to be patrolling….”

Chat Noir leaned in and gave her three quick pecks. “Come on. We can take one night off, can’t we?”

“I guess,” Ladybug said. “But only if we can make up for all the kissing we didn’t do last night.”

Chat Noir sighed in contentment. “That is possibly the most brilliant suggestion I’ve ever heard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap, my dears! Thanks so much for reading, and thank you for all the bookmarks, comments, and kudos. I really appreciate it :)


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